


To Find Our Rest

by Amoris



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-11-18 00:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amoris/pseuds/Amoris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke was certain desperate times called for desperate measures. She only wanted to see her sister - walls, gates, and templars be damned.  It was a foolproof plan... until she ran into the one obstacle she couldn't fight her way around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Heavy Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler warnings up to **and** including the Prologue and Act One. Title and chapter titles inspired by the Chant of Light, Canticle of Transfigurations. And finally, this piece was inspired by little Bran Stark.

* * *

_Hawke_

* * *

_Sweet Maker, I hate this place._

For hours she'd been laying low, tucked in quiet as a Circle mouse near the north wharf of the Gallows. It was as close as she'd dared get during the waning daylight after she'd slipped off the day's last ferry unnoticed. There had been no fear in her then, not when the sun was still shining and she could keep her back to the cold stone of the fortress and ignore how the burnished statues of enslaved torment gleamed in the dying light.

Now, as twilight faded into full dark and the quarter moon was rising in the cloudless sky, Marian wondered – for the first time, why now just for the first time? – if her foolish endeavour would more hurt than help her cause. Perhaps she shouldn't have come alone, or perhaps she shouldn't have come at all.

A bit pointless that sort of musing, all things considered, but unless she suddenly fancied a swim, she was there for the night. She did not intend to spend it outside, alone.

The wharf had long since emptied by the time she moved from her hiding place with stiff limbs; the soft, swollen planks made no sound under her boots, with no one to be impressed with her slinking but herself. It was disconcerting, to see the docks so quiet. Her first memories of the place were drowned in the chaos and confusion of their arrival, and thinking back on it still sent her stomach to knotting.

Nearly two years later, the city guard no longer posted men on the Gallows wharf since the the flow of refugees had ebbed. Only a mere handful landed off every other boat or so now, and those were dealt with at the harbour-master's office in Lowtown. She had heard Aveline complain of it more than once. Not the refugees, though the captain-in-training had more than enough of those on her hands as it was, no, she was often heard grumbling at the lack of her own men on the docks. But Aveline couldn't fight the Knight Commander, promotions and paperwork be damned. The Gallows was the templars domain, absolute and always.

Tonight, however, Hawke was glad of it for a guardsman on the wharf would have proven problematic, a guardsman used to patrolling every shadow, never pacified by the safety of solitude and the strength of stone. But just as she'd been promised, she was the only soul on this side of the wall. The gate was shut tight, a great iron monster with black teeth sinking into the rough, white stone. The templars posted on the other side were properly distracted by the threats they conceived within: midnight trysts and unruly magelings, ever wary of the scent of demons on their dreams.

It was early now, but in a few hours time, those same templars, ever vigilant, would be struggling to keep their eyes open. At least, she hoped so, counted on it. For now, she stayed clear the circle of soft, dancing torchlight and continued on.

It was a rare night, near windless, and the black harbour waters were almost completely still, swallowing the life of the city into the murky depths, a mirror for all the lights of Kirkwall to shimmer in. The echo of a workday not yet finished on the Lowtown docks carried across the harbour, men and elves breaking their backs for a day's pay, enough to feed a mouth or two, maybe, but never enough to break away from the chains of labour and poverty.

Since the expedition, she had barely given a thought to coin, not like those men working the docks, whose lives were consumed by the desire for coppers and silvers to buy bread and bed. But still, that bleak, hard life was freedom, a twisted mockery though it may be.

Marian craned her neck to look up into the darkness, where the top of the wall was calling to her. Freedom. That was what the expedition cost her.

_Oh, my sweet sister._

Once upon a time, a mother had bundled her three young children into a cart and paid precious silver for a man to take them to a ramshackle inn nestled amongst the trees beside a cold, vast lake. By moonlight, the mother had taken her daughters by hand, and her son had followed reluctantly behind as they'd approached the sandy shore. The tower seemed a lone sentinel upon its distant island. The windows had shone like stars against a black night that held none. Even ten years later, if Marian squeezed her eyes shut tight in the darkness beneath her sheets, alone in her bed, she could still see those strange stars, too big and too square to be allowed. Blinding, bright beacons that seemed to know her sister's name and her father's sin.

She avoided bed now when she could, lonely without Bethany.

Never had that long ago night been spoken of, the night a mother had shown her children the place where fear lived, a lonely prison frozen in time from which there was no escape. The youngest of them had clung to her mother's skirts, hidden her face as she quaked and begged to be taken home, but her brother and sister had looked on unblinking at the forbidding tower outlined against a starless sky. This was the fate they were saving their sister from, a cause worth any sacrifice. Firstborn daughter and only son, ever at odds, curled together on an innkeep's straw mattress that night; long after mother and sister had fallen into dreams, they'd sworn, fingers linked. Their sister's safety, above all else.

_Unto dying breath... or, until one gets the other killed._

Hawke shut her eyes against the memory of Carver's piercing blue eyes, the tug of his hand in hers. She couldn't pretend he'd be forgiving. Aside from protecting Bethany, they'd never agreed on much. Not for the first time, she found herself glad to be spared his sharp tongue and bitter brooding. It made her miss him less, if only for a minute.

With her fingers brushing against the pockmarked stone of the Gallows curtain wall, Marian felt the child again, and missed her mother's hand, but Leandra Hawke would very much disapprove of this nonsense. Of any of this, Hawke planned never to breathe a word.

A deep breath, an inward curse. Had she really come all this way to balk at a few childhood memories?

_Move now, Hawke, or you never will._

The creeping shadows along the wall embraced her, and the gentle ruffle of the banners over her head masked the scrape of her boots against the stone. The breeze picked up, sending water lapping against the stone pilings of the wharf. The salty air licked at her cheeks, lifting her hair to play about her face, breathing the strength of the Waking Sea into her limbs and her heart.

She knew that it was not too late to turn back. It would have been nothing to slink back to her hiding spot, conceal herself amongst the crates and netting, and wait for morning. She could toss the ferryman a sovereign or two for his silence and get home before Varric caught wind that she had spent the night out, alone. If not, there would be no end to the searching and prying as he ferreted out the truth of where she'd been.

But she had come so close now, her projected – and might it be added _unproven_ – path into the Gallows mere steps away. Fenris had reluctantly helped her scout it out, and she had spent two weeks distracting the others and every templar in the near vicinity as he'd mapped out a way in, climbing to seemingly impossible places quicker than anything she'd ever seen. He was the only one she could have ever considered asking for help with such a delicate thing, the only one she could trust to be discreet and (mostly) unprejudiced, and even though he'd stewed gloomily over her motivation and hardheaded determination, he'd come through for her. Fenris might have hated mages, but even Hawke had seen him develop a bit of a soft spot for Bethany.

Everyone developed a soft spot for her father's sweet Beth.

Sighing, Hawke took a very thorough moment to check that her gear was secure before pulling her hood up to cover her dark hair. It was not the climb that troubled her, it's the noise she was bound to make during the arduous ascent. She knew she was putting her sister at risk just by being there after hours, but she had no other choice. Bethany, bitter and distant, had seen to that.

And really, sneaking into the Gallows was hardly the worst thing she'd ever done...

 

* * *

  _Cullen_

* * *

 

Past midnight in the Gallows courtyard, and the Kirkwall night was deceptively quiet. It was what made this place almost bearable, that one small saving grace. The solitude provided by the walls, once the gate had set with the sun; under the moon, the fortress on its lonely island was almost as a proper Circle should be.

As Cullen walked the courtyard under the naked quarter moon, he thought that perhaps in another time, another life, he could even have grown fond of this place.

It was the waters of the harbour that swayed him so favourably, he'd realised that early on enough after his somewhat scandalous arrival. The pounding of grey waves that broke against the foundations of gleaming white stone had lulled him when all else fought to drive him away. During the day, when the screech of the gulls and the clamour of merchants and apprentices drowned out the sound of the sea, Ser Cullen would find himself on edge, separate from all else in this alien place. But by night, the noise and the dust, the unrest and animosity, it could all be put aside, almost forgotten, when the stars began to kindle and the day began to fade.

His nightly vigil in the courtyard was becoming something of a common sight. Accepted as part of routine. The templars on duty had taken to nodding at him as he passed. He knew he was still somewhat of an oddity to them, perhaps even a threat to some. The tales of the Ferelden Circle had reached far, were whispered among the recruits and apprentices of all the Circles of all the Free Cities long before he arrived. It may have been more fear than awe that tempered their curiosity, but he found that was all right with him. It made them keep their respectful distance.

There were more than enough threats in Kirkwall to occupy templar attentions without his past troubles to distract them. The city reeked of blood and demons long before his coming. Daily, he saw corruption amongst the nobles, hiding their vices within the walls of their old Tevinter estates. The competence of the city guard had proven itself wanting in both honour and discretion. Thieves of all standing dared peddle and ply in broad daylight, from the dirtiest Lowtown alley to the garden terraces of Hightown.

These days, this place – all of it, each waking moment, the struggle of every day life in the city of chains – made his head ache. It was only in the stillness of the Gallows nights that he could find his reprieve; a strange turn that he'd find his greatest rest when his charges were abed, their minds playing with fate's fire at the edges of the Fade. An abomination could be cut down, a mage's blood could be spilled across the sun-baked stone of this wretched city, but the noise and rabble and chaos of daylight – these were the things he could not fight. At times, these were the things he feared.

He passed in the shadow of the southward gatehouse through which all the daytime traffic trickled, yet his feet did not stop their somnolent march as they had before on so many a sleepless night. He cast his eyes down as he walked past the bronzed statues. He had seen them catch the moonlight too many times before, glinting with the torchlight until they almost seem to _live_ , and move, and breath, and scream their ageless anguish. Such haunted thoughts did not aid his restlessness, and without an upward glance, he moved on.

Darkness was an ally to him, teacher and lover, dearer to him now that he had come to this high-walled city. When he stood his post each day, the sky was open above him, dizzying and bright, but by night, the blanket of stars had a way of sending his mind reeling home once more, to a lone tower at the heart of war-torn Ferelden, and every night, he found himself returning to gaze and remember. "The history of the world is recorded in those stars," the enchanters had said as they'd taught their young apprentices to interpret the stories set there in the heavens. Here, now, Cullen could hear the voices still lingering in his memory, so soft and faraway as to be carried off on a breath of wind. And on his harbour island, the wind never ceased.

At long last, he came to his rest beneath the arcade near the armourer's stall, awning lowered and fluttering gently, the shelves filled with naught but shadow. From there, he could not see the stairs that lead – in a rambling, eventual way – to the barracks and his bed, but perhaps that was for the best. It was a comforting thought, his small, waiting cell, but he was not yet ready to seek it out. That confining darkness held his dreams in abundance, and there was no shame in admitting that he was too cowardly to face them, if the confession was only to himself. Better to stave off sleep, to cross that boundary when exhaustion had taken its firm hold, one that dreams could not hope to break.

And so he settled himself into a watchman's stance, his feet planted wide; an old trick, long practised to perfection, to become a part of the stone. His were the eyes of the fortress, his breath its breath. There was no sound but the wind through the abandoned battlements, the ripple of the city's banners like the beating of night wings against the blackened sky.

Even then, the majesty of the Gallows was not lost on him, an ancient history of salt and blood soaked into each smooth, white flagstone, writ deep and unchangeable. So many ages the city had seen, and survived, and how high she had come to rise above. To that end, each breath he took seemed inconsequential, a sigh that stirred nothing in the silent embrace of nighttime; his was a shadow that would be overcome by the great bearing of others, and in that, he could find relief. Perhaps he would be lucky enough for history to pass him by; could that he become a faceless templar, a name scratched into a book to sit on a dusty shelf, a simple life of service to divine Andraste.

How little he knew then.

Beneath the arcade, he read the passage of the hours in the little scrap of sky he could see. When precisely the moment descended upon him, he was unsure, but as suddenly as it had eased over him, his peace was shattered. A soft _scrape_ above, and a shower of loose mortar that was sent tumbling down the wall, bouncing off the armourer's collapsed awning to scatter across his quiet corner of the flagstone courtyard.

The disturbance, slight and quick as it was, echoed loud in his ears, and slowly, carefully, he glanced up from his slice of shadow only to see nothing amiss atop the wall. Still and steady, breath held, he waited – and his patience won out. The darkness above _shifted_ ; the intruder was subtle and cautious, but Cullen was aware now, and if he strained, he thought he could hear the faint crunch of more loose grit beneath sleek leather boots.

He watched as the shadow slipped along the top of the wall with a grace of stealth he could never have hope to achieve; it moved as night moves, so slowly and lightly that even the stars above would have taken no notice. The intruder had him at a disadvantage. He stood close to the arched support column of the arcade, hidden from moonlight that would catch and dance over the surface of his polished armour. A single movement would undo him.

An old trick, long practised...

His mouth had gone dry. He should have been sounding an alarm, and yet he waited; the intrigue rose slowly within him as the figure climbed down the wall, one careful, calculated stretch at a time. His eyes widened at each pause, each precise movement that flowed into the next. Light as a feather, sinuous as a serpent. And then, the shadow stopped, _dropped,_ to perch catlike atop the massive bronze raptor that flanked the gate.

 _Thief_ , he thought, and his hand went to his blade – too quick, too clumsy. He was discovered, knew it even as his fingers closed about the hilt.

The creak of a bow drawn and anchored cut through the darkness around him.


	2. Of the Darkness

* * *

_Hawke_

* * *

 

She didn't know how long she'd been up there. Her bravado had ebbed with the hours, she'd been out-blustered by the wind, and she had come to the conclusion that this was quite possibly the most ridiculous thing she'd ever done, and even if she managed to live through it, she was utterly uncertain if the outcome would make her want to see the sunrise.

The dauntless quarter moon continued along its arc in the sky, and with every upward glance she chanced, she knew that opportunity was bleeding away as night into dawn.

She hadn't been prepared for an assault of conscience, not up there of all places, and she had been struggling to rein it in whilst simultaneously trying not to fall to a very messy death. Distraction had given her doubts the time needed to find the seams holding her courage together, pulling at loose threads until she felt as if she were being unravelled. Never mind that her arms and legs _ached_ , that her fingers were raw and burning with cold, or that her heart might have hammered its way straight out of her chest if she stopped to give it half a chance. It was her own mind that plagued her most, and oh, how she suffered for it.

There should have been an easier way. No, there _was_ an easier way, but patience had never run as thick in Hawke blood as perseverance. Much to her detriment, she'd realized far too belatedly. Still, she was faring better than she had expected to, confident that Fenris' prediction that he'd need to fetch her come morning would go entirely unfounded.

What would happen once her feet were securely on the ground was another matter altogether, and not one she was inclined to think about while still caught on top the wall.

One bloody thing at a time.

She gathered up those trailing threads of courage and carefully, so carefully, crept along the crenellation, weaving through the shadows as if she were one with the darkness of the Gallows. A part of the stone, a part of the sky; ancient as the sea, temporary as a shooting star.

The hours became her enemy, and there was nothing could be done to still the passing of the night. It was later than she'd anticipated when she finally reached the battlements towering over the south gatehouse. She stopped a moment there, the whole of the central courtyard spread out before her.

She counted out the long templar shadows spilling across the flagstones. One, two, four, six; many of the braziers on the walls were unlit, but templars tended to polish their armour to gleaming, and even in the faint moonlight, with every single breath taken their breastplates flashed their secrets at her: _I'm right here._

It all looked so deceptively simple, fading away into those thick, clinging shadows at the base of the wall to creep past the dozing templars unawares. Isabela might have cooed over the challenge of it. Hawke found she couldn't muster the nerve.

She tried to imagine Isabela here with her atop the wall, quieter, quicker, and infinitely more graceful, and there was a pang of jealousy in her chest that surprised her. Almost immediately, it was chased away by the thought that Isabela would have been less than thrilled to know Hawke had been gleaning lessons in stealth for free over the past few months; the pirate much preferred to play for her favours, but Marian was never any good at Isabela's kind of games.

It made her smile, to think she'd gotten something past Isabela, and –

A smile for Isabela, that's all it took, a smile for feigned, fiery outrage, a misplaced breath, and Marian's foot landed unevenly on a section of the wall crumbled and broken, declining sharply into a very, very sudden drop. It sent a shower of grit and gravel scattering down the wall. She didn't lose her balance, she wasn't _that_ careless and clumsy, but she bit her tongue against a small cry of distress, and then the tang of blood was in her mouth, far stealthier than she.

_Maker's breath, whose damnable idea was this?_

Long minutes passed before she steadied herself enough to continue on, but by then there was a chill in her, a fractured bit of shivering that had crept down her spine and through her limbs and she was quite certain that it had very little to do with the wind.

Concentration. Focus. These were the things that would get her down these long stretches of wall between where she stood and where she wanted to be.

She did not allow herself to think of her sister, the very reason she was there instead of sitting in the Hanged Man with her companions, her back against the wall and her boots up on the table. No, no, that wouldn't do at all. She banished every thought of warmth and comfort, every familiar face. The wall was what she needed to think on, solid and cold beneath her hands. Never mind the tavern and its welcoming fire, never mind the elf who was probably glowering at the thought of her half a city away, and never mind the courtyard and all those impossibly hard paving slabs so far below.

Her hesitation was pronounced, but she moved on; she was careful, too careful and too slow, but she saw treachery in every step now, hyper-aware of just how disastrous misjudgement could be. She wasn't too proud, not up there, to admit that perhaps the whole endeavour could have been considered a severe misjudgement, but she had always adhered to the belief that finer details could be argued after the fact. It gave her time to come up with her defence.

More than half the night was gone when, at last, she was directly above the gatehouse. Hawke gave herself another moment to breathe – _breathe, damn it, breathe –_ and to flex her hands. All that, and only now the hard part.

Twice in as many weeks, she had been chased away after clambering up the ugly, vulturous statues that stood guard beside the gatehouse; Fenris had watched her from the long shade of the late afternoon, lips set to a smirk as she'd come slinking back, momentarily defeated. It was Fenris who had pointed out the cracks in the smooth face of the wall, purchase for her fingers, the tips of her boots. She'd followed his gaze, the length of his arm, memorized it all.

She'd never thought to be where she was then, looking down instead of up.

Her heart beat all the faster. As far as she was concerned, the statues were cursed.

Now, looking down from the wall over the gatehouse, she closed her eyes, said a silent prayer to her silent god, and began her descent. All she thought on was the wall, the night-cooled touch of the stone as her cheek pressed upon it, the brittle edge beneath her fingers, the tight pinch of her toes as she jammed them into spaces a fraction of an inch too small. Still, there was a certain fluidity to it, and she was able to scale down to gatehouse with little enough trouble, though swallowing her heart out of her throat proved problematic. It was no mean feat to drop down onto the bowed neck of the statue without catching her gear on the spiked corbel. The echo of her boots on the weathered and marked and _hollow_ statue rang heavily in her ears and shook the night around her. She held her breath.

Silence, but for the hum of struck metal that slowly died away until it was naught but a shiver beneath her fingertips.

Crouched as low and small as she knew how to make herself, Marian allowed herself a hard-won reassurance; the ground below was seductive in its solidity, and once it was beneath her boots again, the rest would easy. Mind, staring down the gullet of a dragon would have seemed easy in lieu of facing her sister.

Yet slipping down the back of the statue and making the last leap to the ground was completely lost to her as she caught it, the slightest movement at the furthest corner of her eye, a fleeting flash of silver, there and then gone.

No, not gone.

She could see him now, the brutish outline of a tall man in full plate, and for the most intensely torturous of moments, she saw her dead brother standing before her, a spectre chained in the darkness. She was shaken and shamed and filled with fear, but the illusion shattered when the moment passed, quick as another breath on her lips to replace the one the false ghost had stolen away.

Her bow was off her back and in her hands before she could give it a thought, an arrow drawn even as she realized what she was doing, and only the lightest brush of her thumb against her cheek as she drew back the string made her see, truly _see_ , what has held her focus.

The naked apple of his throat. A single shot.

His hulking, awkward outline was etched lightly against the shadows that had hidden him from her as she'd surveyed the courtyard from above. His hand had gone to his blade, but then his arm dropped uselessly to his side. An acknowledgement, a courtesy she did not return in kind. His chin was raised as he watched her still so high above him, his neck exposed and pulsing with his lifeblood.

She pulled in a breath, her hands steady; she was a statue of flesh upon plinth of bronze and yet she hesitated because she knew too well of the racket he'd make when he fell, bringing every templar in the fortress descending upon the courtyard. She wouldn't have near enough time to climb out of sight. It would undo _everything_.

She lowered the bow slowly. Seconds passed, too many, and the templar did not make his move. Not to defend himself or call the guard down on her, only that first reach for his blade, second-thought and then forgotten. It dawned on her then how closely she'd been watched. A fine, easy target she'd made shimmying down the wall, and the flush of heat in her face sent her cold cheeks prickling.

The templar stepped forward, the faint moonlight rippling along his mail, a shimmer like water but the clatter of his movement was all wrong. Two paces, at most. Too many. Without thought or breath, she adjusted her aim once more. Only the strength of her fingers, her grasp on her reflexes kept his blood from staining the stark beauty of the flagstones. Say nothing of guilt or hesitancy or merciful indecision.

"Not a step farther, Templar." Her voice, strained and quiet, belonged to the shadows and not herself.

He remained silent, heeding her words if not the arrow still nocked and ready.

"You are no thief," he said. She heard Ferelden in him and she knew him as the Knight-Captain. She wondered, ever briefly, if he'd heard Ferelden in her and knew her as she was. With a distinct measure of uneasiness, she restored her arrow to its quiver and lowered her bow for good and all.

Cold, empty minutes ticked past with nothing to mark them but the dreadful loud beating of her heart. She wanted nothing more than to melt into the safety of the darkness, lose herself in the maze of narrow stone walks and cruel iron parapets. But her mind filled with thoughts of her sister, and this templar whom she'd once thought to call ally.

And with that thought, and with every ounce of common sense and better judgement screaming at her to retreat, she replaced her bow, put up a plea and a prayer to the Maker's good grace, and finished the climb she'd started.

 

* * *

_Cullen_

* * *

 

"Not a step farther, Templar."

There was an edge in that voice, a hint of arrogance, as familiar to him as the weight of his armour or the scuff of boots on stone steps. It resounded of home, calling him back to wilder places far across the sea.

He had been surprised to find her a woman, but a refugee? He could not grasp what sort of madness would take hold a person so to lead to such extremity. As a result of his training as a templar, and through his own bitter, bloody experience, he'd grown very, _very_ unfond of surprises, but his fascination held all other instincts firmly in check.

"You are no thief," he found himself saying. He had stepped out from beneath the shelter of the arcade, a foolish notion but one he'd yet to regret. Out of the shadows, he could better see the way the high stone walls of the fortress drank the moonlight, glowing ever so faintly, so that the dark, curved outline of her bow rising over her head was just discernible to his well-accustomed eyes. A raptor's crowning glory.

It was not patience that caused him to stand his ground, but a bluff masked as bravery, and the long minutes marched by in emptiness, shouting down her indecision to him. And so he waited, unyielding in the face of an unproven marksman. Was her aim true? Would he hear the sigh of her bowstring as she released it before he was struck dead? Or perhaps she would miss, and her arrow would clatter uselessly to the stones, bringing every templar from every corner of the courtyard down upon them. Maker above, what was he _doing_?

The Ferelden sheathed her weapon with a stretch of limb, and he drew an easy breath, ignoring the sweat that was already cooling on his brow. A second breath came and went, and she was sliding down the back of the statue; a third, and she was already swinging herself down and landing lightly on the smith's empty table. He'd drawn in another breath, but the exhale wouldn't come as she approached him, walked past him to sink herself into the darkness beneath the arcade. His last true glimpse of her was by the moonlight cast through the gate over their heads, long rusted into place; a cage of shadow to dance across her back, a polished bow, a leather quiver, arrows fletched with white.

The courtyard was deadly silent as she disappeared into his shadows where even the watchful statues could not see her; after a last long look across the yard, he followed after her.

His intruder had chosen a corner draped in shade and shadow, nigh invisible to all but him. She was leaning a shoulder casually against the wall, half-hidden by an empty cart that seemed to belong to no one and was always in the way. Beneath the arcade, the darkness was incomplete, touched by the moon at its edges, diluted by the flickering light of the brazier on the other side of yet another gate, one that Cullen was certain did not open from his side. But even so, it wasn't until she lowered her hood that he was able to see even the faintest outline of her face.

"Knight-Captain," she said with a respectful bow of her head.

He paused, narrowing his eyes. The dawning came slowly, recognition creeping over him, and he almost laughed at himself for his folly. Whatever had stayed her hand, he was glad for it. He had once been witness to a demonstration of this archer's aptitude, and even through the chaos and blood of the fray of battle, he'd taken sharp notice of her ability.

"Serah Hawke."

Her presence perplexed him, but the fact that she travelled unaccompained was what truly gave him pause. He could recall only once that he'd encountered her alone, away from the constancy of her companions and their clucking tongues: the day Bethany Hawke had come to the Circle. He'd gone himself and taken the young apostate gently, quietly, a courtesy to this fallen family and a respect paid to the young woman who'd proven herself a friend to the city of Kirkwall.

Hawke had not considered his actions so.

In the six months since her return, he'd spied her time and again in the Gallows courtyard during the afternoons, ever shadowed by an elf in cruel black armour. She lingered long and disappeared at dusk before the closing of the gates. Cullen had watched her at times, knowing the futility of her purpose and bound to silence. It was not his first taste of the stubborn pride of these two Hawke sisters, one determined to hide and the other persistent in seeking. Now, he had to wonder if he'd had the right of it after all.

It was said Marian Hawke would reclaim the honour of the Amells in Kirkwall. Meredith had dismissed the notion out-of-hand, wrinkling her nose with distaste. Cullen had known better, and stayed silent.

Here, now, he found that he could not. "I must admit, I am impressed," he said.

She sighed. "Why? I've been caught." She didn't sound the least bit remorseful.

The corner of his mouth twitched. "What sort of spirit would possess you to –"

"I'd much rather you consider me a thief than possessed, Ser."

"Are you a thief come to steal your sister away, Hawke?"

A pause followed, and she shifted away from the wall to stand straight. "Maker damn you, templar," she said, and through the heat, he could sense unfathomable sorrow. "You've taken her from me. My sister's place is here now, who are you to ask if I feel it should be otherwise?"

Her fervour took him by surprise, though less so than the words that she'd spoken, such a woeful admission to be given under such circumstance. A mere glimpse at her hurt, at that emptiness, that was all and it was far too much. His was an inadvertent step forward, and he raised an apologetic hand. "I did not intend to cause offence, or to treat your trouble so lightly."

She did not shrink away from him. Just barely out of arm's reach, he could see her eyes, pale and colourless in the gloom, carefully studying his face. There was no mistaking the deep frown that set upon her then. "Ser, you are not – that is, I believe it safe to say that I would make a very poor thief." She shook her head. "Even so, I don't think my sister would allow me to take her away. She always was the obedient one." There was a break in her voice, though he did all he could to ignore it. Another flash of the wound within her that would not heal. Flesh always knit crooked and ugly over a broken heart.

"Why are you here, Hawke?" There was gentleness in his voice where there should have been none. Who was he to comfort this woman who had flouted not only the rules set down by the Knight-Commander, rules that he was meant to uphold in her name, and in the name of divine Andraste, but the precepts and traditions of hundreds of years. Even if he were to put aside the fact that she was standing before him in the dead of night, hiding in a place that she was not meant to be, the woman was the child of an apostate, an abettor the whole of her life. Only the Viscount's seal had protected her and her mother from Meredith's justice.

Hawke, unaware of the restlessness of his thoughts, gave him no response. The white of her teeth showed against her lip as she bit down upon it, as if that would stem whatever incriminations were gathering on her tongue.

Again, he asked, "Why are you here?"

She sighed, and her mouth went tight and twisted. Her eyes had never left him, still watching his face for whatever sign it was she sought, whatever safety or reassurance she was in need of. He had never been one with anything of himself to give, and just as he opened his mouth to say so, to send her away, she offered up the shyest, most hesitant of smiles, and he sucked in a breath, wondering if perhaps there wasn't a little bit of thief in her, after all.


	3. The Judgement of Truth and Lies

* * *

_Hawke **  
**_

* * *

 

Why was she there. Why was she _there._

The Gallows was not so fearsome a place. The way the torchlight danced prettily off the high stone walls was familiar, a comfort; she could have been anywhere in Kirkwall, listing in shadows to watch the people pass. Mind you, pressed into the corner behind the armourer's stall, she couldn't see those horrible statues, gaunt and weeping, and it was a blessing.

The templar before her was still expecting an answer. She supposed he wasn't used to defiance. She'd seen the mages and apprentices in the courtyard by day, flinching away as their protectors walked past, and it was no small wonder. Anders had been whispering dark, ugly things in her ear since the day she'd met him, tales of templars and their justice, their _mercy_.

She bit into her lip as she regarded Ser Cullen, a templar as formidable and unyielding as all the rest. Anders had tales to tell of him, too, strange and sad tales and yet stories were all they were. Anders had been long gone from the Ferelden Circle by the time – she felt a burden of sorrow pressing on her, dragging at her with dull and useless claws.

Cullen did not prefer her silence, ignorant to the cause of her reluctance. "Why are you here?" he asked again, and still there was no steel in his voice, nothing that marked him as what he was or what he'd been made out to be. Just a man in plated armour, branded by a flaming blade; a man who'd sworn an oath.

She'd sworn his oath once, bastard words whispered in the darkness, her brother kneeling beside her. The light of the hearth had shone in her father's eyes as he'd made them promise.

The echoed memory of her father's words rang truer, clearer than any recollection of the impassioned speeches of her friend, fresher by far in her mind but passing dismissible. It was the memory of hearthlight, of Carver and Father, of Bethany asleep in the loft. It was the knowledge of common cause, and it gave her reason to smile at Ser Cullen, still watching her so intently. She did not know that she could trust this templar, no more than she knew she could trust the city guard, an escaped slave, an apostate, a blood mage... and so she _smiled_ , and leaped, and took her chance.

 

* * *

_Cullen_

* * *

 

"I assure you, my intrusion is necessary."

Cullen raised an eyebrow. He knew the woman was brave, had heard tell of her recklessness, but never had imagined such madness as this. "Necessity required you to climb our walls in the black of night? Had one of the watchmen seen you –"

"None of your patrols saw me, Ser." She shrugged her shoulders. "Perhaps you should look into that."

"I saw you," he reminded her.

"You're not supposed to be here, are you?" There was mischief lurking at the corners of her wry smile. "I know what keeps me from my bed but I can't imagine what keeps you from yours. Do templars not need to sleep?"

"No more than the shadows that lurk amongst the statues," he said, and that bit of mischief grew all the clearer. "Our reasons need be only our own."

She sighed, watching him carefully as she said, "You know why I've come, templar."

"Your sister."

Mutely, she nodded.

"Your mother comes often," he said, but it was a mere observation and a very weak attempt at carrying on a conversation he did not know how to have. Visitors to the Circle were not forbidden, because they did not need to be. The families of the mages sent to the Circle were little more than names on paper, homes nothing more than a mark on a map; failed promises of a life that wasn't meant to be. Apostates had _no one_ , and yet pretty Bethany Hawke had more than any mage running from the Circle could ever have dared dream; a mother, a sister, a name with meaning, a home to remember. And strangest of all, a family that did not consider her curse a stain upon their lineage.

_Amell._

He touched a hand to his brow, metal-clad fingers cool against his skin. Would that it were so easy to rid himself of memories that served no purpose but to ache within him.

"My mother is welcome," was Hawke's reply. He looked up, and he was sharply reminded that she was not the other. She was only herself. Her arms had gone about herself, hands cupping her elbows. Her gloves were leather, fingerless for climbing, and looked soft and supple.

"And you think you are not?"

She had no response for him, only another shrug of her shoulders, this one so weighted by thought that it could scarce be considered a gesture at all.

"Was it your intention to find your way to the mages' quarters?" he asked, still trying to see the sense in her cause. He glanced over his shoulder at the darkened courtyard, the maze of wide, pillared passages and narrow, winding stairs that led to the rooms where the mages slept under constant watch. He found himself wondering how far she could make it, if she could reach her sister without notice. Then he thought on the walls that surrounded them, sheer and treacherous, and her standing before him, and he found he could not say, one way or the other.

"It was, and is," she said. "Do you think to stop me, Ser?"

"I had thought I already had," he said, smirking. "This is folly, Hawke."

She was silent a long moment, and he could feel her eyes upon him; dark eyes he knew she had, all but lost in the shadows that hid them so well, but the solemnity of her gaze was not so readily lost to darkness. When finally she did speak, she'd lowered her voice to all but a whisper.

"Folly would be to stand in my way," she said. "I want only to see her, to know that she's well."

"Your mother –"

"My mother does not see with her eyes," Hawke said, and there was great sadness in her words. "My mother may see a smile, but not the force of will that keeps it on the lips. She sees only the lie and not the truth behind it. Maker forgive me, but my mother is a fool, and Bethany is not. She knows how to pretend. She's been doing it all her life."

"And so you come seeking the truth of it."

"The lie is there for me to see each time Mother returns from this place and she's smiling. The truth –" She stopped herself short then, sighed with exasperation, muttered something under her breath too faint to reach his ears. An oath or a curse or her sister's name, he didn't know.

"You believe she hides from you," he said then, though the words came unbidden. It was not the audacity of his presumption that discomfited him, but the ease with which he was able to do so, wanting answers and prodding them from her, gently, gently. These concerns did not belong to him. His concern should lie with his charges, ever and only. He couldn't explain, even to himself, the curiosity that had taken hold of him when he'd spied the shadow moving along the battlements, nor the obligation that had stayed his hand, silenced his voice as she'd made herself known to him.

"She hides from me," she acknowledged, "as I once hid her from you."

Cullen had never lived in a world that had known love; truly, it seemed a base and pointless emotion, a weakness no less dangerous than any. He'd known tenderness and attachment, the ache of infatuation, aye, but _love_? A foreign concept, as unfamiliar to him as a father's pride, a mother's embrace, and yet he heard in her voice something that tugged at places within himself he'd not known existed. A fierceness, a sorrowful certainty, these were the things he heard. It was not for the love of a mage, but for the love of a sister, and all else be damned.

A lump had formed in his throat as he watched the darkened outline of her face, one that he'd come to know well. He forced himself to talk around it. "You know I cannot allow this, Hawke."

A beat of silence, as empty as the night around them, and then, "Have you a family, Knight-Captain?"

The question did not surprise him, though the sting he felt as she asked did. "The order –"

"May the Maker damn your order, Ser," she said, words spat out with so much vehemence that even a battle-hardened warrior such as he almost cringed at the force of them. "Have you a family, Cullen? Blood tied or love bound, have you a _family_?"

"I do not." His throat seemed full of sand, and he was near to choking on the dryness.

"Was it –" She paused, the whole of the world pausing with her. When she spoke again, there was a catch in her voice like the flickering of torchlight. "Was it the Blight?"

The Blight. He'd oft wondered. "I was dedicated to the Chantry when I was very young. I remember nothing of the people I came from." The woman who'd birthed him, the man who'd sired him, their faces covered by the masks of a stranger, a hundred faces, a thousand names.

"I am sorry," she said, and sounded it.

"As am I, never more so than now," he admitted, "if only to understand your sacrifices better. But it changes nothing, Hawke. You cannot be here. This is your sister's place, not yours."

"Would that I could be anywhere else," she said sadly. "I have not come to steal her, nor trouble her. I do not even intend to wake her! I just – I just want to _see_ her, is that so much to ask?"

 _It is, more than you know,_ he meant to say, but she stepped forward again, closing the gap between them. The words stuck like burrs in his throat, the weight of the unsaid heavy on his tongue. There was a moment of sharp awareness; the scent of her leathers, the night's chill on his cheeks. Her small pale hand descended lightly upon his breastplate. The Gallows around him seemed to shrink away into nothingness. He was taken in, overwhelmed by the force of her purpose, the unerring strength of her love for her sister.

Without thought, without effort, he put a hand on her shoulder. "Hawke –"

"Please," she said, interrupting him. "Help me, Cullen. I only want to see her, and – and know that she's all right, truly all right."

" _Hawke."_

Beneath his fingers, clad in his heavy gauntlet, he could feel a tremble overtake her. Her hand left his breastplate, the press gone, a sudden absence that he almost missed for all its unfit presence. Those hands reached up and grasped her hood, lowering it to fold over her shoulders so that the outline of her face was more pronounced, and he could clearly see tip of her nose, her teeth worrying at her bottom lip, displaced torchlight shifting in her dark eyes.

"Please, Cullen."

 

* * *

_Hawke_

* * *

 

She willed herself not to cry.

Tears did not come easily to Marian Hawke. An age past, she'd watched as the pure flames had engulfed the body of her father upon his pyre, curls of thick smoke stinging her eyes until she'd turned away, lest she was betrayed by her own heart. Carver's eyes had glistened in the leaping light, but as she'd caught his gaze, he blinked and the moment was gone, replaced by that same pitiless, empty glare.

She'd buried her baby brother beneath a mound of broken stone, numb and unmoved even as the streaks began to appear in the grime upon her sister's cheeks.

All she'd wanted was to protect Bethany, to give her mother some semblance of security after she'd left on the expedition. She'd left her sister to her fate as a mage, and this templar before her had come to see the laws of divine Andraste carried out, deliverance most cruel.

And yet now – _now,_ damn her – pointless emotion, bitter sentiment threatened to pull her down. It was her breathing that saved her, so steady and predictable, the in and out of it. She'd placed her hand upon his chest, the steel of his plate cold beneath her naked fingertips as they covered the shadow of the etching. She felt steadiness resonating from him, she wanted it to calm her, but when she felt the hard lines of his gauntlet pressing into her shoulder, the effort, the knowledge, all of it, took her over and ever so lightly, she began to shake.

 _It's the cold_ , she told herself. Would that she could believe her own lies.

"Hawke –" he began, but she was too quick for him, slicing through her own name with a plea that bubbled forth out of her mouth before she could stop it.

"Please," she said, and _Maker, stop talking now, Marian_ , but no, "Help me, Cullen. I only want to see her, and –" _and how did I ever think this possible,_ "and know that she's all right, truly all right," she finished lamely, closing her eyes tight against the utter shame of disappointment.

" _Hawke."_

 _You're losing this battle, Marian,_ she warned herself, _a battle you should never have begun._ She let go her anchorage upon his chest, skin tingling with the sudden touch of empty air after the cold of his plate. With dreadfully unsteady hands, she pulled down her hood. Immediately, she felt the chilled fingers of the harbour night sneaking down her neck, and she braced herself against it, looking up into his face with all the courage she could summon – more than some men, most women could ever dream, even more so than was her custom, with no friends at her back. Only this templar in front of her.

"Please, Cullen." Two words, for all her courage, only two could she manage before her mouth snapped shut again, and she held her breath to wait.

... And wait did he make her, long moments bleeding into the next until she was forced to take a breath, and another, and another, until her trembling had stopped and she thought she might be crushed under the unmoving weight of his hand upon her shoulder. Patience thrust to the fore, perseverance forgotten, she stood as still as the statues from which they hid, and waited.

And when finally she could bear it no longer, when her only thought was to turn and flee, to climb into the safety and the silence of the shadows and the starry night, he spoke a gentle whisper.

"Follow me."


	4. He Shall Lead Her Safely

* * *

_Cullen **  
**_

* * *

 

Never in all his days had he seen a person move the way she did.

She followed him beneath her cloak of darkness. Each step she took was as slow and sure as the one before, the one after; step by step she slid along the path of pure shadow that clung to the bottom of the wall like cobwebs. There were times when he lost sight of her, when he could barely discern the faint silhouette of a woman from the murky depths of gloom that consumed her. Perhaps he never truly saw her and his eyes only played their tricks. And oh, but his eyes were good at their tricks.

His trek across the courtyard was a nervous one. His footsteps on the stones rattled louder than he'd ever known them to be; for so familiar a sound to become so strange left him suddenly disparate and wholly uncomfortable. Never had the walk to the gate seemed so long. He checked his step when he could, still uncertain if he were half-imagining the shifting in the shadows that might or might not have been Marian Hawke.

Only once did he catch a bare glimpse of the true flesh and blood of her, and not the spirit of stealth she seemed to become when the darkness swallowed her up. Only once did he see a fringe of leather hood as the flame leaping in the brazier gave an unexpected lurch, tossing light against the white stone walls with wild abandon, ignorant of the intruder and her purpose.

Only once did he fear for her, when no path he chose was free of templar eyes and he held his breath as she passed within an arm's reach of one of his very own watchmen, and he knew he was damned when he prayed for her to make it through her trial unscathed.  The flames did not betray her again as she slipped by his man, silent as the grave.

And only once did he stop to give her vital time, to distract one of his own with pointless instruction when he rightly should have been shouting and cursing at the laxity of his watchmen and bringing the wrath of his order down upon the shadow rogue's head. He thought he saw her pause for the most fleeting of moments as he quietly berated the sleepy young templar whose poor luck it had been to draw the watch, on that night of all nights. Perhaps she questioned the honesty of his intent, and perhaps she would be justified with another, but not with him. His course was a chosen one, steady as the sunrise; he did not give her up, and kept the young knight's attention on himself for just one moment longer.

"Vigilance is our only virtue," he said after the illusory darkness behind the young templar's back had stilled, empty and cold, and he was able to move on.

She was ahead of him then, he knew. The shadows danced at the edge of his vision where his memories so often acted out their deceptions. It would be nigh impossible to catch even a glimpse of her now, and he wondered if even the timeworn bronze statues guarding the courtyard with their sightless eyes would take note of her. Perhaps none would know her - none but the great, vulturous beast at the gatehouse, of course, the one she had taken as her ally in trespass.

And then suddenly, he was upon her.

She was perched before the herbalist's stall for all to see; a brazen move, one that set his heart to pounding, but the only templar standing watch in that far corner of the courtyard was oblivious to the shadowy figure of a woman slinking lithe and silent along the stones. The light of the brazier at his back blinded him; he nodded at the Knight-Captain as he passed, alone and destined for sleep as with so many a night before, and he did not see Hawke slip away.

Cullen mounted the steps, knowing she would follow. Of that he held no doubt, and he gave no backward glance of reassurance. If he felt the night's air stir as he passed beneath the raised portcullis into the west entrance hall, he did not comment upon it, and if he found that he was comforted by the presence of so quiet and courageous a ghost, he tried his very hardest to ignore it.

To be lulled into such a safe, sweet fallacy, no, he could not allow that of himself, not again.  And by the Maker, it was no kind fate.

 

* * *

_Hawke_

* * *

 

Before starting her terrible little adventure, Hawke had vowed never to speak on it with another soul, and she'd all but forcibly extracted such a vow from Fenris before he'd reluctantly left her alone on the wharf before the sun had set. There had been a glint in his eye as he'd given his word, a trick of dying light that spoke perhaps that he was more amused than intimidated, but she'd pulled back quickly at that fleck of gold on green, and it was gone as he had turned away to leave her to her mischief.

Yet now, as she passed unwelcome through the darkness behind an ever-vigilant and completely oblivious templar night watchman, close enough to reach out and touch if she'd wished, she knew that come the morning, she'd be dragging Isabela from her bed at the Hanged Man to gloat before a part of her exploded with the rush of it.

The dutiful templar shifted, and the gentle rattle of his armour was a deafening clangour to her leaping heart. It was a hard thing not to jerk to a stop, cease to breathe, hard not to become one of those damned weeping statues of old Tevinter, frozen for eternity in their wretched suffering. But then the nameless templar stilled, the roll of his burdened shoulders complete, and she could breathe and move and thank the Maker above that the shadows hid her cowardice as well as they hid the rest of her.

The path Cullen had chosen had led her beneath the west arcade where the reaching fingers of torchlight could not grab hold, where she was safe to move as she pleased. She tried to keep a good distance between them, but his gait was a slow one. She fought against the impatience that wanted to creep up her spine and make her careless and clumsy, and when he stopped to turn a watchman's attention from the yard to engage in courteous instruction, she slipped past him, knowing full well that he had opened the way for her.

His eyes could have burned away the darkness around her, she knew; a single word would undo all. But he kept his silence, and she kept her feet and paid him no mind.

" _Vigilance is our only virtue,"_ she heard Cullen tell the templar knight. Guilt ran through her like mage's lightning.

Truly, she paid him no mind at all.

In the quiet corner of the outer courtyard where the herbalist plied his trade by day, she stopped to catch her breath. She hunkered down before the empty stall, the sharp, reedy scent of elfroot still clinging to the collapsed awning to remind her of Ferelden; now, of all times, she thought of home.

She kept still, knowing she was not alone. A single templar stood watch, nightblind with a brazier at his back, tossing the light over his shoulder to hide all but his own shadow from him as it stretched out across the paving stones. He did not see her; these templars protected by their daunting plate and god-given purpose were taking away what challenge she'd thought to find.

All but Cullen, who had seen her and known her and helped her.

She watched from her slice of gloomy shadow as Cullen finished with his watchman and walked on. His momentum was even slower than it had been before, and when he caught sight of her, there was the smallest stumble in his step that he could not hide. The templar standing guard over his flickering circle of light nodded at the Knight-Captain, and Marian Hawke followed him, easing herself out of her crouch with all the sleek silence of a cat.

Carver had always envied her this, Carver with his heavy feet and his barrelling about, his bragging and his boasting; Carver, who had never learned to let his blade do his speaking for him. He would never have had the patience or restraint for all this sneaking about.

Carver wouldn't have stood down as she had; he wouldn't have given Bethany up without a fight.

Well, she wasn't done fighting, not just yet.

She pushed her sister and brother from her mind as she followed up the steps in Cullen's shadow, her back hugging the cold stone wall. The portcullis was up, its beastly iron teeth suspended bare inches above the templar's head; she suppressed a fleeting urge to reach up and skim her fingertips along them to see how sharp they really were. There were no men on this gate, within or without, no eyes to watch, no ears to hear.

And then she was inside the fortress, swallowed whole by the cavernous west entrance of the Templar Hall. Her eyes went up and up to see nothing but blackness, sliding along the smooth walls where no crack nor foothold could be found. Unscalable, the secrets in the darkness unreachable.

It was here that Cullen pulled her aside, the touch of his gauntlet at her elbow near enough to a comfort that she didn't jerk her arm away. Into the most secluded little alcove he tucked them, a niche that even her sharp eyes hadn't seen as she'd hastily looked over these new surroundings.

When he turned to her, she could not see his face. "You are certain this is your course of action?" he asked her, fingers still resting on her arm; she never would have thought the touch of templar steel to be so gentle.

She gave a wry grin up to the darkness, one he could not hope to catch. "Had I not been certain, would I be here, messere?"

"If only I knew," came his reply. And before she could think to counter him with – well, with what she could hardly say, but there wasn't time enough even to consider. He gave her arm an insistent tug, his gauntlet pressing its edges into the soft leather of her jerkin. She made to pull her arm back, but he would not let her go; his fingers closed about her wrist, an unyielding grip that reminded her suddenly of whom she was dealing with. A templar, second-in-command to Meredith herself; a man, it was whispered, who had come from Ferelden with the blood of an entire Circle upon his hands.

She was given little choice but to keep close behind him, and the noise he made as he moved along caused her to cringe, wishing nothing more than to yank her hand back and slip into the shadows that had always covered her so kindly. The floor here was uneven, the square paving stones dislodged in some places, broken in others. Small, tentative steps were needed, but Cullen's hand did not tighten, nor did he pull her along; he was as careful and quiet as she, but for the clink and clatter of his armour.

The passages he led her down were poorly lit and blessedly empty; the smell of the salt sea was gone, replaced with dust and rotting leaves, incense and armour polish. The air was close here, warm and heavy, dulling her senses as the night's toll began to sneak up on her. These halls were strange to her, long, columned stretches of clinging grey shadow and bare orange torchlight. All doors they came upon were wooden with banded iron, strong and shut tight with no light to spill out beneath in betrayal. These were the quiet ways, the secret ways, and not a soul did they pass at that ungodly hour of night.

Finally, a right turn led to a door that led to the night and its salty, sooty air. A set of stone steps carried them up to a walled courtyard, where the heights of the fortress were outlined black against the small square of starry sky she could see. If there were any braziers here, no one had bothered to light them; at first, even after the dimness of the hall, the darkness threw her and left her uneasy, but soon her eyes grew accustomed. The white stone of the walls were choked with skeletal vines, thorny to the touch. Everywhere were the same iron spikes and bronzed statues that gave the Gallows its sinister quality, the air of oppression that set it apart from the rest of the ancient slaver's city.

"This courtyard belongs to the mages," Cullen said quietly, bringing her attention back to him. He'd stood so still, she had almost forgotten he was there. "Many take their air here in the early morning. Your sister is among these."

Hawke gave the courtyard a more scrutinizing second look. "Do you see her often, Ser?" she asked, brushing a fingertip over a vine, grey with decay; she gathered a handful of the spindly, brittle things and gave them an experimental tug. She was rewarded with a lungful of dust and a pricked finger. She frowned; no good for climbing. She continued to indulge her curiosity, stepping up onto a low stone bench, examining the wall beneath the vines with her hands, but it wasn't until her fingers slipped into a grit-filled crevice that she realized Cullen had not answered her.

She turned to find herself standing over him; had she been so focused on her train of thought that she had not heard him step up behind her? He offered his hand, a courteous gesture if not completely unnecessary, but something was amiss and she hesitated. He raised his hand a little higher, as unwilling to speak as she was, it seemed.

With a sigh, she reluctantly slid her fingers over his, and was met with cold, calloused flesh. It was almost reflex to try to pull away, but his hand closed around hers, and he gave her that same gentle, demanding tug, and against every better judgement she had, she stepped down to face the templar.

 

* * *

_Cullen_

* * *

 

"Do you see her often, Ser?"

Maker save him, would this night see no end?

Against every rule and precaution set down by Meredith, he'd brought Hawke deeper into the fortress, past his own watchmen, through a maze of corridors and junctions, for what seemed to amount to no other reason than that she'd asked him for help. She'd followed without question or complaint, and yet here, in the belly of the dragon, she still wanted to talk.

Her query was an innocent one, but he found he had no answer for her. In truth, he saw very little of Bethany Hawke, but when he did, the sad young mage always caught his eye. Walking with head held high, she respected the knights set to watch over and did not cower before them, even when a little fear would have done her far better. The apprentices adored her, the other mages were wary of her, and the enchanters were delighted with her talent and control. Even the Knight-Commander had given her silent approval of the young Hawke.

But as ever, Bethany reminded Cullen of her sister. Something in the eyes, a spark of impetuousness, guarded but constant.

Perhaps had the darkness around them not been so complete, he might have seen that spark then in Hawke's eyes as she walked along the wall, touching and testing here and there. The dead vines that clung to the wall crackled in protest as she took them in hand, and gave a sigh against the stone as she released them.

He watched her as she hopped up on a bench, feather-light. What she did he could not see, but he could hear the movement of her hands, the whispered scrape of her soft leather gloves as they ran over the old, weathered stone, the rustle of the wasted foliage as she brushed it aside. He knew not what had drawn her attention, but his own was on the sky. The moon had slipped down behind the wall, which meant that the dawn would soon be coming, relentless and without pity for those whom had spent too long in the cold embrace of darkness.

Cullen knew there was no time remaining to them, and the spell was coming to its end. He pulled the gauntlet off his right hand to hold it with his left. The night chill sent his newly-exposed skin prickling. He was behind her with only a few paces, and when she turned toward him, it was with the smallest gasp of surprise. Of all the night's small miracles, this one made him smile; of all things, he had startled _her._

He raised his hand, his palm laid flat and expectant. A moment of nothingness passed before he held it a little higher, everything lost to him but this one simple gesture. When finally she took his hand, the touch of night could not have prepared him for the iciness of her fingers, toughened pads of cold, cold skin extending beyond the supple leather of her gloves. Her arm gave a jerk but his fingers tightened on her so that she could not pull away from him. Not that it mattered, not truly. Where would she go, when he'd hidden her within the depths of the fortress so well?

Hawke alighted from her perch, as graceful and quick as he'd come to expect. He held fast to her small hand and those strong, patient fingers. An archer's hand.

It descended on him quickly then, the knowledge that there was an arrow in her quiver with his name on it, held evermore in these deft, sure, _small_ hands. And with that sobering thought, he let her go.

"You are fond of questions, Ser Templar, but you are miserly with your answers," she said, gently rubbing the offended flesh of one hand with the other.

"And you are in no position to be demanding of me," he said, utterly tired of the thinly-veiled discourse. "There is a tower overlooking this courtyard where you that you may watch the mages from for a time, if you can manage the climb." The neglected gardens were near the heart of the Gallows and thick with shadow until almost midday, by which time most of the Circle's mages would be sequestered within by their duties.

"You would not deny me now," she said, and he could almost have been certain that she was teasing at him, trying her damnedest to find one weak spot or another in his resolve, just as she looked for each fracture and chink in the wall to aid in her ascent.

"I would, and I will," he said. "I can help you no further, serah. Dawn approaches, I suggest you –"

"Maker take the blighted dawn," she said wearily. "I – I am grateful for the help you've given me."

He nodded, and turned on his heel. "I hope you find the truth you seek," he told her as he glanced back over his shoulder, ready to walk and leave her there in the darkness of the dead garden. But those nimble hands were faster, reaching out to catch his arm, a firm, steady grip that gave him enough reason to pause, but not enough to turn and face her once more. The night had been generous, and he wondered absently if the shadows that covered them had been woven just for her. He cursed the gloom for hiding her face, for hiding his own so that she could not see what little he had left to offer her. His transgressions on this night were a mere pittance when compared with the grievous wrong he'd done her when he'd taken her sister, no matter the call of duty or divine.

"What I mean to say is that I thank you, Ser, and that I am forever in your debt," she said with a meekness he'd not have expected of one such as her. "I will not forget this."


	5. At the Edge of Light and Shadow

* * *

_Hawke_

* * *

 

The dawn came grey and cold.

High upon her hidden perch, Marian Hawke made a poor statue. She shivered as the sky paled and the sun rose white behind the veil of dismal cloud on a horizon that she couldn't see. Sheltered from the wind, she could hear it howling in the battlements far above her head; it whispered her name and she turned a deaf ear, tightening her hood down over her hair until she could see nothing, hear nothing – nothing but the eerie voice of the wind.

The night played over in her mind, a jumble of snips and flashes, words and phrases that played at the edge of coherency. She could not grab at one thought without letting go another, and yet she continued to try and chase, and grab, and hold. But no matter the effort, the outcome always remained the same. Whatever her thoughts, as fleeting and elusive as they were, all were pushed from her mind at the barest reminder of why she had come, and how and why she was still there.

She didn't stop to wonder for even a moment on the _how_ of getting herself out of there, not just then.

_Maker above, just one moment's peace, just one,_ she thought, closing her eyes.

The templar Cullen had done her more a kindness than she could ever hope to repay, and would that she could speak naught but praise for his heart and his strange sense of duty. She'd never known a kind templar. She had known brave ones certainly, and she'd met the lenient, the incompetent, and the merciful and pitiless both, but mostly she'd known the _dutiful_ ones. The men who hid behind the emblazoned blade upon their breast, true knights ever vigilant and faithful, who followed the guidance of the Maker, judgement clouded by their righteousness and shiny plate.

There was nothing to set this templar apart. His path had been his choice, and he had chosen to help her. Their courses had collided; he had broken no vow of his order, only disobeyed a command from a superior. It was not a matter of faith but a matter of conscience, and this troubled her to no end, for who had ever heard of a templar with a conscience?

It was with thoughts such as these that Marian Hawke distracted herself from the reality of what she'd done. Never mind the worries of her dear sister, the gnawing doubt of what a mere look could tell; never mind just how she was going to manage sneaking back out of the damned place now that she couldn't be scaling the walls in broad daylight. Templars watching an empty courtyard in the dead of night may only have concerned themselves with what they could see before them, but she'd noticed during her afternoons of haunting that the mages of the Kirkwall Circle had a tendency to stare wistfully at their patch of cold Marcher sky, praying for wings. Her dark leathers would show like an ink stain against the walls, even during a cloudy pall such as this.

No, she was stuck fast. It occurred to her then that she might have gone searching for the mages' quarters once Cullen had disappeared, but if he'd shown her one thing, it was that the Gallows fortress was a maze of halls and stairs and yards – and gates.

Damn it all, she'd meant to be _gone_ by then, back over the wall and tucked away on the wharf like so much cargo. There had been a _plan,_ one that had held together superbly and had gone off without a hitch - in her head.  A plan to be on the first ferry off the island to the Lowtown docks, to head up to the market and look like she belonged there before heading to home and hearth. Little birds would chirp to those who would eventually come along looking for her, and with luck there'd be a few hours of sleep in the interim.

She would never know why all her plans had seemed infallible. It was truly the stuff meant for Varric's tales, a daring, well-intentioned mission into the depths of the Circle of Magi to reunite with her imprisoned sister. The light of day brought with it great and terrible truths, and as ever, the truth of it was always much simpler than the tale, stark and ugly, with no promise of a peaceful end.

Now, she was hemmed in at the center of the fortress, and the only one of her companions who had known what she was to attempt tonight was the only one who wouldn't come to the rescue, even if he knew somehow that things had gone wrong. Although, curled up on a sheltered rooftop in the gloam of dawn, and for all that she was far from safe and clear, she couldn't yet say one way or another if things had truly gone wrong.

But, in all fairness, she would consider a turn in the Keep's dungeons a success if it meant she could see Bethany. What was she willing to sacrifice for the chance to speak to her sister, or to hold her for just a moment...

Marian tightened her arms around herself, clenching her jaw as she shook her head to rid herself of such damaging thoughts. Pure selfishness had driven her this far, that she knew and she knew it well. The danger she was putting her sister in, drawing the attention of the templars. By the Maker, she'd dragged the Knight-Captain himself into the thick of all her plotting.

A deep breath was needed to steady herself. She would respect the distance Bethany was trying to achieve. But that didn't mean she wouldn't push it as far as possible. She wouldn't be herself otherwise, and she was certain her sister expected no less.

" _Unshaken by the darkness of the world,"_ she whispered, praying to the shadows, _"she shall know true peace."_

She watched the sky as the stars continued to wink at her upon their canvas of deepest purple, but soon the coming dawn leeched all colour from the sky, leaving only white emptiness. The struggle of the stars was valiant, but fated to fail. Every time she blinked back the exhaustion burrowing at her eyes, there were fewer and fewer stars, until none remained at all. Without sight of the sun or the horizon, she could not judge how long had passed, how long she'd sat unmoving and fighting off heavy-headedness with only statues and stars to keep her company. An hour, two at most. A lifetime since she'd watched the sun go down from her hideaway on the wharf. An eternity since she'd dragged Fenris from his mansion into the noonday light before anyone else tracked them down with distractions, determined to see this through.

"So it is to be tonight," he'd muttered then, that eternity before.

And – suddenly there was a sound from the murky dark down below, the rusted groan of ancient hinges as a door opened at the far end of the little stone garden. As she stirred from her rest, she wanted to give a groan herself at the ache in her bones, but not a breath escaped past her lips as crept oh so slowly along the wall at her back to the edge of the little rooftop. She murmured a soft prayer into her hands, looked down into the courtyard, and for a single moment, Marian Hawke forgot how to breathe.

 

* * *

_Cullen_

* * *

 

Cullen lit the candle on the stand, and took comfort in the eager flame licking at the misshapen beeswax. The flame was familiar, as were the shadows it tossed against the stone walls of his quarters. This dance of light and dark took place around him each and every night as he prayed. He attended his candle faithfully; lit before bed and extinguished upon the waking. The tabletop was crusted with spilled ivory wax as one candle replaced another in slow turn. Never did he let the shadows prevail.

Not until this night. He'd let the shadow in, and now his world had shifted, imperceptible as it was, the sense of it was there, the sense of wrongness, of change. Alone, he knelt before his makeshift altar, head bowed low in plea or prayer or both as he searched for the guidance of the Maker in the light of his tiny, solitary flame.

" _Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow."_

Time consumed him as he bent low on the cold stone floor, the edged cracks and rotting mortar digging at his knees. Without the weight of his armour he felt insubstantial, weak. His meditation was a mockery of faith, a mask to hide behind; comfortable and safe but leaving him hollow and wanting. Thought took form without function, an onslaught of memories, uncontrollable, some sweet and some cruel and all vying for emotional response, but he was drained, numbed to the pull of memory by an exhaustion that went bone deep. Yet still he endured, never moving as his candle burned lower and lower.

" _In their blood, the Maker's will is written."_

He wondered if it was deliverance that had dropped into his darkened corner of the courtyard. He did not know what had stayed her hand, when no shot could have been truer, easier. And she had spared him, just another faceless templar in branded plate, and she'd climbed down the statue and invaded his solitude, knowing his voice, the lines of his face showing soft in the shadows. She had trusted him as an ally, a bond of faith and friendship nigh unbreakable, and now that burden was his to bear, ever in silence.

And yet he did not mourn this fate. Surely he should. To be a templar was to be vigilant and steadfast. There was to be no will but that of the Maker. He had broken no vow of his order, as long as Hawke remained true to her word. He did not doubt it of her, and for that he doubted himself. He was too trusting of the woman, when trouble and change seemed to follow in her wake. A refugee bent on shaking this city of chains from its foundations to the highest spires.

Cullen stared into his little flame. With a sigh, he untangled his hands from their white-knuckled lock of supplication, and placed them palms down on the stone floor. He bowed his head until all he knew was the darkness of his own shadows, those within and those without.

Beyond the windowless walls of his cell, the blood and bones of the fortress were stirring. Outside the protection of the stone, the sky must be lightening, the city waking, the choppy waters of the harbour turned a steel grey in the faintness of dawn. And somewhere, farther off than he cared to think, a single unwelcome guest had hidden herself to await the curse or grace of luck and fate.

If she were caught, he could not step forward and speak for her.

If she were to escape without notice, he did not expect forgiveness to come easily, or willingly, even from himself.

Soon, as he began to calm, there was little left inside his head but the new-forged memories of that night, soft and yielding and as changeable as the winds. He thought on that smile she'd given him, the one prone to mischief; he thought on that shower of grit and pebbles that had scattered down the wall to give her away, echoing loud as he recalled it, but truly it could have been no more than a whisper of stone against stone. How close he had been standing to the place she'd come down the wall into the courtyard, a well-scouted path on a scarce-lit night. And of all the eyes of the dozen men standing duty in the expansive stone yard, only his were open enough to the darkness to glance upon her as she moved unseen among them.

It was no headstrong hero that he had faced, a woman of surpassing skill and cunning, ever aided by the bow, blade, and spell of worthy companions, a woman of a complicated origin and a promising future. No, he had seen her vulnerability, heard her sorrow, and sensed the broken heart pulsing beneath her breast. In truth, he did not expect to see it again. A ghost had come to him tonight, ghost of a girl who'd left Ferelden behind, and come the morning light, like her shadows, she would disappear.

He hoped enough of her determinate tenacity would see her through the trial ahead; he did not envy her and he could not help her any more than he already had. He had handed to her what she had been struggling to take for herself, and she'd vowed never to forget it.

And that was a troubling thought.

His knees had long since begun their aching when the first sounds of early morning crept beneath the door of his room, feet and low voices and the scrape of straw bristles. Slowly he stood, swallowing back his groans as his weary muscles stretched and sang their songs. Even free of the bulk of his armour, his movement did not come easily, but he managed with a decided lack of grace.

But still, to duck his head and blow out his candle was the hardest of all.

The bed accepted his weight with little more than a soft sigh, and he sank down as a man shackled and chained. And in the unbroken darkness, thinking on shadows and the light that made them, Cullen fell asleep.


	6. To Stand in Blessed Places

* * *

_Hawke_

* * *

 

There'd been a time in her life, a _once_ _upon_ kind of time, when Marian had been jealous of her sister.

The twins had never been able to recall the earliest years, but Marian could, and those memories still haunted her sleep.

Fear had worried her mother's nerves raw, and at her seams showed a weakness, an inability that her eldest daughter had known even at such a tender age; Marian had been so young, but with her father's coaxing, it had been in those days, those now almost forgotten days, when she had begun to take care of her family.

And Malcolm Hawke had beamed with pride for his Mari.

She and her siblings were children of an apostate. Such a big word, a heavy word, and not a day of their waking lives had passed without the shadow of it looming over their each and every action, thought, and breath. It was what bound them together, this inescapable sin, clever Marian and brash Carver and quiet Bethany, three small souls so different, ever tied wrist to wrist to wrist, the whole of their moments spent struggling under the burden of their father's blood.

It was Malcolm who had first placed a bow in her hands, made specially for her slight span and stature, while Carver's sword was still wooden and dull. It was Malcolm who had shown her how to hold it, how to anchor it. How to make the bowstring sing and her arrows fly true. It was her father who had fashioned her a man out of straw to practice upon; Mother had wept at that, at her little girl with her torn dress and dirty face, triumphant as her blunt-tipped arrows pierced the strawman's heart.

It had taken a long time before Marian had realized why her mother had cried that day, tears shed for the proper lady she would never become, the life her mother had left behind that she herself would never lead.  Leandra had set her stores in Bethany after that, prim and pretty and polite, and for a few very short years, there'd been peace in their family. Every night the same roof, the same bed; every day the same faces, cautiously friendly when the three little ones had gone to market for Mother, baskets in hand, Carver with his wooden sword to lead the way.

And then Bethany had come up magic.

That dreadful morning would forever be branded in Marian's memory, seared into some dark little corner where even now she feared to tread. And in the here and now, on her belly looking down into the dead stone garden of the Circle mages, it was what Hawke thought of, that thrice-blighted morning when Bethany's blood had told true what she really was.

Carver's shouts, sweet Beth's tears, oh Maker above, the _flames_.

The world had changed that day, their peace shattered.

A toppled candle, Father had told the landlord, and easy enough to replace the scorched bedding and to repair the smoke-damaged loft, but come morning they would be gone. Ahead of the templars, making their crooked way across Ferelden, a route she could never trace, never mark on any map. And the villages had blurred together, the windows shuttered tight against the darkness of the night, and the faces met along the way were without voice, narrow-eyed and ugly, and something inside Marian had reared its head and begun its whispering.

And then they had found Lothering, and their wandering came to its end. Lothering, the place her ghosts still called _home_ , a strange word, and here in the city of chains it echoed as raindrops, insignificant and lonely, coming in sudden squalls and spattering against the stones with no hope of purpose. Just a tinge of longing, over and again. And if the rain never ceased, and the ache for home and her father's smile and those dusty, sunny afternoons never left her, perhaps it would wash her clean.

And she had watched even then, watched her father teach her mageling sister, a pair of apostates bound by this terrible secret, and never did they weep for themselves. Always, his eyes aglow, Beth's full of trepidation and doubt.

Without Father's notice, Carver had taken up his steel, and grew apart. Marian only watched, and waited, and said the words her father taught her, the vows he forced upon her. Never to fail Bethany. Never to fail him. And deep inside, she'd _wished_ , utterly ashamed and drowned in her envy, and the ugly whispers grew louder.

But all her ghosts were silent now, with the sky ever lightening and the tangled garden spread out below, where the deep gloom of earliest morning still refused to give up its claim. A dreary, dreadful place, too much cold stone and brambled vine, and no light but a patch of slate sky. Even Marian, a guest, an intruder, could feel the despair seeping into her blood and bones.

She thought of Lowtown, the soot falling like parched, ashen snow, the fiery glare of the sun through the haze of an afternoon, the noise and the filth and the freedom, and the remorse began to drag her down again, pulling at her with a lover's insistent fingers, and more then, and more, digging and clawing until her hands clenched to fists and she pressed her forehead to the cold stone of the rooftop, and forced the tears to submission, coaxed the breathing to come. Once, and once again, and again, again, again.

_I am sorry, Carver. Father, forgive me._

_Maker, forgive us all for what we've done._

It was a shameful long while before she could lift her head under the burden of her guilt, and peek down into the yard once more. A single templar hiding beneath his helm had joined the mages lingering amongst the benches and vines, and a single torch had been placed in the bracket next to the door, tossing the shadows about, wild and lonely. The only door was the one she'd come through, she'd already noted with dismay, and her only way out. For now, she watched below; above her, night gave way to day.

The mages kept to themselves, never mingling, always standing apart. There were only two at first, but soon two more came along, and one left, and then another, and so on it went until Marian grew bored. A few she recognized from afternoons spent in the main courtyard; none had ever taken notice of her watching them go about their sequestered lives.

The beggar of the gatehouse, an elven boy with fire-kissed hair, the craven Alain.

Some stayed only moments, walking fitfully and leaving quickly, while others lingered overlong, sitting statue still on the unforgiving stone benches until Marian could almost forget that they were there.

She didn't forget them, however, so acutely aware of each body, each with its own telling behaviours and patterns of movement. That she could see the eyes of none troubled her; that she did not, and could not, know what thoughts echoed through their minds nettled her to no end. But still she watched.

An hour passed, at most, while she lay there on her belly, chin on her hands. The Tranquil she could separate from the rest by the totality of their movement, each step and gesture articulated to perfection, stiff and without grace but mesmerizing all the same. The apprentices were set apart by their dress, the restlessness that betrayed their youth, and by the distance they kept from the templar keeping watch over them.

None knew that she kept watch over them all.

Well, none but for one.  Cullen, the exemplary templar who'd given her this chance. Cullen of the quiet gaze, Cullen of the gate, Cullen of Calenhad and all that lay behind him, his past paths hidden from her, yet plain to see in the lines etched at the corners of his eyes, the dark lull that rested there. Suffering and fear, but purpose, too, and determination; traits so easily reflected in her own eyes, and the soft lines that had begun to form at their corners since Bethany had been taken away.

The door below creaked again, a dull and heartless sound.

Marian knew her sister at first sight, and though no mage on the courtyard flagstones paid Bethany Hawke any mind at all, the watcher above was transfixed. Below, the templar guardian stirred, shifted, but made no movement to indicate Bethany's presence affected him in the slightest. She was no one to the sentinel in his shining plate, so assured, but to Hawke so far above, no sight was sweeter, and her heart thundered and skipped all in a single moment as the door closed noisily behind her sister.

From so far above, she could not see Bethany's face, but the tumble of dark hair was unmistakable. The robes she wore were heavy and strange, ugly and dark and without shape. Marian wrinkled her nose just at the sight of them, wondering all the while why her sister was hiding beneath such a cloak and who was meant to be discouraged by it. It was an uncomfortable thought, but one she stored away. Questions were for later, safer times, and she was quite sure that a certain templar could be coaxed into giving her the answers.

Bethany walked a slow lap around the courtyard, her steps small and her head bowed. Her shoes were hard-soled, clicking against the stones, and the sound reached Hawke's ears, a companion in comfort as she watched her sister so closely. She'd never allowed Bethany such a thing in the days they'd walked the streets of Kirkwall, far too noisy for Marian's liking, a woman who preferred to walk in absolute silence. It did not surprise her in the least that she could hear her sister's footfalls; no matter how little the rebellion would do her sister now, Hawke recognized it as such all the same, and even though the soft _click-clack_ of her sister's steps shimmied up her spine most unpleasantly, she could not help but smile.

Another mage left the garden of brambles, and after a few minutes, another followed, leaving Bethany alone with her ambling circuit and her templar guardian. Once the other mages had gone, her sister seemed to move more freely, and her pace slackened step by step until she came to a bench and stopped altogether, sitting then so primly and properly that Hawke's heart ached at the sight of it, so many memories of Mother's lessons of courtesy and courtliness creeping back to her. She still held herself with a regal grace, her sister did, back straight and shoulders proud and chin demurely bowed.

And above her, elder sister in battered leathers, bow and quiver and harness abandoned for ease, pressed to the forbiddingly cold stone roof, hood pulled up to hide her face and hair. There was no elegance about her, though she had a certain lithe grace that could not be denied, for stealth and subversion, all Mother's lectures wasted breath, all her frustrations lost upon a daughter who'd have rather rolled in the dirt with a little brother than sit down to tea with a little sister.

No one to save her from Mother's attentions now. A pithy thought, all considerations weighed, and again Marian felt shame sack her gut. She wondered how well the lessons and lectures of their mother would serve her sister here in this Circle of high stone walls and dead sunless gardens.

On her bench, Bethany was still, and next to the door, the helmed templar was stiller. It almost seemed as if time itself had abandoned them here in the secret heart of the Gallows, but the flickering torch in its bracket told true that the minutes were still slipping by. So far above, the sky had reached a middling, a gradual wash of white to grey to purple, and the stars had completely winked themselves out.

She could not crane her neck to see the sky, the towering heights loomed far too dizzying for that. Instead, she was forced to creep away from the roof's edge and roll carefully onto her back. After she'd taken in as much as she could stand without turning her stomach, she closed her eyes against the morning, took a long breath, and when she had won out the battle against her vertigo, she rolled over once more and crept to the edge to resume her spying.

Her sister was watching her.

Instinctively, she ducked her head, even when she knew – _knew –_ that her sister could not see her. Not there, not in the cloaking shadows that she could wear so well, not with the sky brightening above, not with the torchlight dancing so close, so steady. Still, her breath had caught and for the most fleeting of moments she felt as if the darkness had abandoned her to her fate, leaving her open for her sister and the nameless templar to see. The world did not change around her, did not shake or tumble or end, and the moment passed like so many others and she was struggling to regain the footing she'd lost – so to speak, of course.

And then the templar was speaking. A bark of a command that bristled Hawke and put her near to seething as Bethany rose, elegant as could be in those ungainly robes. She walked with measured, clicking steps across the desolate little courtyard and down the set of steps to the sunken door. She paused for a moment there, as if contemplating, a hand on the wall next to the torch bracket.

The templar grunted another command as he jerked the door open. The hollow, rusted creak of it as it was opened raised the hairs on Hawke's arms underneath her layers of leather, more than even the wind on the battlements had done.

With that, Bethany was gone, the templar after her, and Hawke was blessedly alone.

She did not move; for how long, even she couldn't rightly say. Long enough for her limbs to stiffen and her body to grow cold. The sun would not reach the place until past midday, and she felt suddenly, palpably, a wave of despair for the mages, one that Anders had never been able to inspire in her with all his preaching of injustice. But then again, wasn't everyone just a little _unjust_ when held next to him?

She didn't like the answers that came to mind.

When finally she stood, her aching muscles cried out in protest, piteous and painful. She stretched this way and that until her body felt looser, before retrieving her quiver and bow. She fingered the thick, stiff string momentarily before hooking the bow securely into the harness mounted to her quiver. A fluid motion, done far, far too many times. Why did it always seem that she was putting her weapon away? Would that she never had to use it to begin with...

She thought of Cullen and the arrow she'd drawn. The span of his throat, so small but so ripe as he'd raised his chin to watch her.

Caught once. Perhaps she was no good at _any_ of Isabela's many arts.

Her descent down the wall into the courtyard was short, and she could feel the tremble in her arms as she struggled to support her own weight. Another reason why going back over the wall was impossible. She'd severely overestimated her own strength and stamina. One of the multitude of mistakes she'd made that night.

The solidity of the flagstones beneath her feet was a relief, but she allowed herself no time to feel it as she stayed close to the base of the wall. She circled the courtyard with slow, even steps instead of crossing it outright. The templar had left the torch burning, and in the chaotic shadows that it created, she hid and she hid well. She was almost confident she could retrace the path Cullen had led her down.

Still, there was far too much hallway in the Templar Hall between where she stood and the main courtyard; too many stairs, too many gates that she could not count on being open. No kind, quiet, misguided templar to lead her now; she was on her own, and now more than ever the very thought disquieted her to the core. Now, she had no choice but to face the consequence of her own damnable desire, _alone_ \- as was only fitting.

And then something caught her eye, the shadow on the wall next to the torch bracket. A sharp outline, dark, thick, and unmoving. She turned her head, the torch near to blinding, and when her eyes focused, she did not want to believe them.

The blood red scarf, darkly embroidered, tied loosely and casting its unforgiving shadow against the bleak stone wall. Tentatively, she reached out and ran her fingers along the soft material, worn to pliancy and cold to the touch. A gift... or a goodbye?

It was barely a thought in her mind before she untied the scarf from the iron bracket. She wrapped it twice around her wrist, tying it awkwardly and pulling it tight with her teeth.

And then she was out of time.

She eased the door open, and peeked through the crack. The hall beyond was dimly lit and empty, but she was braver now with her sister's luck wrapped round her wrist.  She whispered a prayer and slipped through the door, trying her best to ignore the ominous groan of rusted hinges as she closed it behind her.


	7. The Peace of Benediction

* * *

_Hawke **  
**_

* * *

 

As she walked the halls of the Gallows – walked demurely in fact, and not _ran_ as fast as she bloody well could – it dawned on her that she had never taken the time to fully appreciate the oppressive pall that hung over the entire fortress like a veil of sorrow. It affected all of her, that heady pull of shame and fear, and there were times that she felt she could not bear it, and the statues wept and hid their faces from her sympathies and her sins.

Maker's breath, but the Tevinters had been a cheerful lot, hadn't they?

The halls were not so deserted now, but they were not so crowded either that she could ever have a hope in Thedas to blend in and look the belonging sort, let alone disappear as she was sometimes able. This was no Lowtown market, clamouring with scents and sights and shouts all vying for a moment's notice; a place where a woman might be able to lose herself amidst the stalls, sit and wait and watch on to her heart's content. No, in this place of whispering robes and shining plate, her weather-stained leathers looked provincial and out-of-place, and she was armed, which reflected poorly in a templar's eyes, but in the early morning bustle perhaps she could slip through mostly undetected.

Mostly.

It was well into the morning now, and the chantry bells on Hightown's highest hill had already tolled their songs of worship. She'd heard it drifting faintly across the harbour. The familiar sound, no matter how far off, had given her a bit of the comfort she was in dire need of, but that small blessing was wearing thin, and her heart was back to lodging itself at the base of her throat.

She was no longer certain of the way forward. The fault was entirely her own, letting her impulsivity pull her on the way she had, when her head told her quite clearly and colourfully that what she was doing was wrong, and that no good would come of it. But her chance encounter with the templar Cullen had swayed her judgement, and her desire to see her sister had done the rest. Without his help, she never would have –

Giving up, turning her back, walking away.  Hiding, cowering.  These would have been her inevitabilities had she not encountered the lone watchful templar among so many pretenders.

These were her thoughts as she came to another juncture. The helmed, faceless templar standing guard in the passage paid her little heed, watching her through the slit in his helmet with curiously pale eyes. He did not stop her or question her, he allowed her to pass with all the impassivity of one of the thousand statues she'd walked beneath.

" _Vigilance is our only virtue."_ Cullen's voice echoed in her head, steady, sure.

The city was doomed.

She could feel the templar's eyes on her back – more accurately, her back _side_ – as she walked away, and again the urge to run crept down her limbs, and her toes curled in her boots as she fought it off. The hallway she'd chosen stretched out cold and white and unwelcoming before her. Still, it was little wonder that living the consequence of her choice was an unpleasant task. Especially when she'd gone it alone, and somehow found more trouble than if she'd dragged any one of her friends along. Quiet as a shadow, indeed.

She was nearing the end of the hall, and if she remembered correctly there was a right turn beneath a gate and a set of steps beyond –

The appearance of a man in robes coming from the opposite gateway rattled her out of her thoughts. She gave her hood an instinctive tug down over her face, and the mage took it for a passing greeting. He smiled at her, recognized her, and she felt the delicate balance of calm she'd been tiptoeing shift off kilter.

"Serah Hawke," said the herbalist, still smiling warmly. "It's not very often you grace these halls."

"Never, in fact," she said, and let go her hood – not quickly enough to hide her hands, red, ragged fingertips and nails rimmed with dried blood.

"My goodness, your hands," Solivitus muttered, shaking his head. "Dare I ask?"

"Wiser not to. Listen, I seem to have lost my way. You wouldn't possibly be able to –"

The herbalist pointed to the way he'd come, the gate on the left, raised and resembling a stone mouth full of nasty iron teeth. "This corridor leads directly to the Templar Hall. From there, the central courtyard should be easy to find." He was still smiling at her, but there was an odd glint in his eye, a knowing look that lent humour to the smile, and she'd find it curious if she weren't so eager to put an end to it. Wiser not to ask, and old Sol was wiser than he looked.

"I was certain it was to the right," she said, chewing on her lip as she considered the left.

"The right leads to the barracks and the knights' quarters," he said, and his smile slipped a little, his interest piquing all the more. "What business could you –"

Hawke felt a blush rise up in her cheeks. She cast a sideways glance down the hall, where the templar still watched beneath his helm. She'd lingered far too long. "I was obviously mistaken. Thank you for the directions, messere... and for your discretion."

"My friend, your hands –"

"My hands will be looked after, I promise," she said. "Again, thank you." And with a fleeting smile, she left the herbalist to his wondering and disappeared around the corner – left, to the left – her steps quickened now because by the Maker she couldn't stand another minute of it, the Gallows and its horrible statues, the templars and their sightless staring – ever watching but never seeing, never truly _seeing_.

Soon, she was on familiar ground, the great Templar Hall opening up above her, and there before her, another monstrous gate, up and inviting and guarded by two templars. There were others in the hall, an elven girl with a broom, two mages on a bench with their heads close together, bent over a tome so big that it spread across both their laps. More templars were on the gallery.

One foot in front of the other, a feat she'd been performing most all of her life, walking and breathing and quite often at the same time, but on that day, with the long night behind her and the bright morning before her, one foot in front of the other had never been more improbable. Yet she managed it, her face shadowed by her hood, her eyes on the floor. Past the templars, beneath the gate that looked ready to bite down on her and put an end to the whole, messy affair there on the threshold, that very last moment.

And then she was outside.  Blinded by the morning sun, she skipped down the stairs to the courtyard. All the tension knotted in her gut began to give way, as if it had been a small thing that she'd just lived through. She was _out_. Around her, the yard was already busy, the Tranquil and the templars, the mages and the merchants all ready for another day, just the next in a long line of days stretching out before them, all of them without a clue or care for what she'd done while they slept.

No one paid her any mind at all, at least not as she walked out of the Templar Hall, but as she sauntered slowly across the yard, she knew she came to their notice, just as she did every time she came to the Gallows, her name known better than her face, and the stories known best of all, growing and spreading like wildfire throughout Kirkwall, tales about darkspawn and daisies.

She sighed, and touched the red scarf she'd tied around her wrist, Bethany's keepsake. There was more truth in that one little scrap of cloth than in the stack of her sister's letters kept on the desk in Gamlen's tenement, dutifully sent, dutifully read, dutifully mourned.

Marian had not spoken with her sister since the day she'd returned from the expedition to find Cullen taking her away, and her mother weeping and unreachable. Bartrand's betrayal had stolen those last, precious days from her. Six months of silence, nothing but letters of lies to reach Marian's eyes, nothing but stories to reach Bethany's ears. More lies, darkspawn and daisies.

It wasn't until she was on the ferry that the tears began to threaten; her legs near gave out as she collapsed gracelessly into a seat. She paid her way, ten silvers for the ride, a sovereign for the ferryman's silence, a second for good measure, and a third because she knew Varric would pay well for the tale if he ever caught wind of what she'd done. With luck, she had perhaps a week, but just then, she could not summon the energy to care. Curled in her seat, her back to the Gallows, it was thoughts like these that carried with her across the harbour, her tears falling only because she did not have the strength left to stop them.

 

* * *

_Cullen_

* * *

 

Cullen woke slowly. In a moment of peace, conscious thought found its way through the murky fog of his heavy sleep, triumphant over the tangled tendrils of half-formed dreams and memories old enough to whisper in the voices of the dead. He opened his eyes to familiar outlines silhouetted against the gloom of his windowless cell.

Within him, his darkness was silent. Though the ghosts of memory still loomed, creeping at the edges of what was real and what was not, blood and flesh and violet light, it was _quiet,_ praise Andraste. Without, his waking breaths were not ragged with fear but easy and slow, strange now but something akin to _normal_. He had not been chased from his own dreams, and he took a moment to feel that victory deeply.

As he sat up, the night before came back to him in one sudden wave of clarity, like the first burst of sunlight over a dark horizon. Hundreds of years had passed since his bleak, lonely little cell had seen even the most fleeting kiss of sun, but he knew light then, harsh, blinding, and for a moment and many that passed after, he was overwhelmed. His hands came up to cradle his head, still heavy with the weight of his dreams.

A shadow on the battlements. Hawke and her arrow, his life slipped so seamlessly into her deft and capable hands.

How, _how_ on that night of all nights could he have stumbled into her way? The Maker above knew what happened to those who crossed her path, trampled into dust or ever caught up in her wake, she left no one untouched, he knew well enough already, and yet...

And yet he could not find the answer he sought. Not in his half-woken state, not in his wretched waking darkness. He remembered vividly, distinctly, extinguishing the candle before taking to bed. Night after night, his candle had burned as his only comfort, his only chance at renewal upon the morning. So fragile a thing.

Still, he'd woken, eyes opened. The darkness did not consume him, it did not overtake his senses, he was not lost.

Cullen stood, and stretched stiff, weary limbs. The quality of the light spilling in beneath the door told him the hour was later than he would normally have anticipated upon waking. Had he truly slept so long, so well? It seemed impossible, but the muffled talk beyond his door told him differently. Recruits in the halls, their banter loud, young men assured of their place in this world and the next.

To wake and greet the day in such a way... was there ever a time Cullen had been so unburdened?

Going through his usual morning routine left nothing but time for contemplation. He was no stranger to heavy thoughts, but busy ones were new to him. He picked up a stone ewer and filled a bowl with water, thinking about the shadow that was Marian Hawke, the shadow he'd left in the courtyard, and Bethany Hawke, the mage who had drawn the shadow to the Gallows in the dead of night.

A shadow could not exist without light to cast it, but this one existed regardless, this one thrived in the dark, hidden places, moved with assured grace, beautiful and deadly silent. But for one misplaced step, one little slip, he would never have known the secrets of the shadow's existence. Perhaps he would be better for it.

As he splashed water over his face, he could not deny that perhaps he would not.

All these thoughts and slow musings were done in darkness, another reason to pause and ponder. Since the endless days of Uldred's atrocities, he could not abide the dark. The black held secrets of its own which only the light could dispel, and so in the aftermath of that nightmare, he'd chased the light – right out of Ferelden and across the Waking Sea. The blight had covered his own cowardice, and all the wrongs he'd done.

Light sustained him, his faith led him, purpose filled him. He knew no other way but the fire, the pure light of the Maker.

And Hawke? A disciple of the shadow art, a creature of the shrouded grey world between the darkness and the light, skipping about on quiet, nimble feet. She was neither, she was both.

Thoughts of Hawke followed him as he left his quarters, always at the back of his mind, stealing his concentration. He'd been so distracted once, and by the Maker, how dearly he had paid for it. That grim, unspeakable time was behind him, and yet before him stretched the unknowable, the promise of all yet to come, curiosity ever tempered with caution, for as a templar, was he anything if he was not cautious?

By the time he had reached the knights' armoury, he had no answer for himself, but he became blissfully distracted by more menial tasks. His armour was waiting for him, cleaned and polished. The faint scent of oil still clung to it. But the armoury itself was empty just then, the armourer and quartermaster nowhere to be found, the old steward gone.

He armoured himself alone, no easy feat, but he'd always found peace in the task of covering his weak flesh with leather and steel, to hide himself beneath the brand of his order. For he was only a man, as any man, but when he wore his plate, it was the divine protection of sweet Andraste herself that shielded him.

He was just reaching awkwardly over his shoulder to buckle his left spaulder into place when the steward walked in, smiling at the sight of the struggling templar. He came immediately to Cullen's side, and without invitation or initiation, his efficient hands made quick work securing the rest of his armour.

Only when he had finished did he speak. "Knight-Captain," he said, beginning with the courtesy that ought have come from him the moment he'd walked into the armoury. "I had begun to wonder if you had run off in the night." The smile remained, the _courtesy_ remained, but the old man's age-wearied eyes told a different, uglier tale.

It was well-known to Cullen that there were those who had been, and continued to be, less than accepting of his sudden appearance and appointment in Kirkwall during a time when Ferelden refugees had been overwhelming the city, draining stores and generally causing trouble. But with the swell of refugees, many apostates had slipped into the city, and many more that the templars had been tracking on rumour within the city walls had escaped during the chaos. His sword and his loyalty had been most welcome, and he had never given much thought to the dark eyes looking on, but he noticed them now as he did daily, those who despised his accent, his manner, and a darkness within him they'd heard tell of but never seen.

It did not bother him. He had stared down a demon, resisted desire – before he'd crumbled and cowered and begged for the mercy of death, and yet he'd _lived,_ a debt owed and not forgotten.

Amell, kin to the shadow that had stolen into his thoughts, and to the mage she'd come seeking. Amell of Kinloch Hold, Amell of the Grey. A girl with a crinkle in her nose and ink on her fingertips, she'd saved him, saved Ferelden, crowned a king.

He'd thought to follow her once, to find her after he'd fled Calanhad, but the Wardens forged ever deeper into the dark places, and he was not without fear of the dark.

Cullen hastily tied the thick crimson sash over the faulds riveted to his breastplate, and left the narrow-eyed old steward to his work.

He did not know every face that he passed as he walked the maze of wide corridors and high galleries, but that did not matter to him. He knew that he, himself, was a familiar ghost to the men and women who made the island fortress their home, not only templars and mages, but artisans, labourers, and servants as well. There were those who nodded at him in passing, those who greeted him by name, and those who kept their eyes averted until he'd walked past. One girl in apprentice robes stumbled to a stop and bolted in the other direction upon seeing him. It was a reaction he was not unaccustomed to instilling in the mages, and it was with a heavy heart that he remembered it had not always been so.

No mage in Kinloch Hold had feared Cullen; they had known his soft heart and whispered of it in the library stacks. And when the time of Uldred's reaping had come, they had thought he would fall first, easiest, but he had resisted, and as the chaos grew, his resolve did not falter and the mages had forgotten him.

Demons, however, are not so careless, nor negligent of their prey.

In Kirkwall, the mages trembled at his passing and the whispers he heard carrying across the stones told a different tale, but as time went on, he knew the mages of this Circle would learn that there were those of his order walking the halls of the Gallows that needed watching and fearing far worse than he.


	8. Shield, Foundation, and Sword

* * *

_Hawke **  
**_

* * *

 

Hawke went to market because she could not face going home.

She certainly hadn't planned it that way. The debacle that was her infiltration of the Gallows could very well have gone down as the most poorly-executed plan in the life history of Marian Hawke, but for all her conceptions and intentions and _plans_ , to wander the narrow Lowtown alleys searching for purpose and meaning in the hazy sunshine had not been one of them. Even as she'd stepped off the ferry and wound her way around the harbour, heading for the slums she was meant to call home, she'd had no other thought in her head than to fall down onto the musty, straw-filled mattress that was her own and curl up to sleep. Hopefully, she'd even remember to remove her boots first.

However, as she lost herself further into the urban mess that was Lowtown, with its crooked walkways and steep stairwells and row after row of rambling merchant stalls, she found that her wakefulness was not waning, that the thump of her pulse beneath her skin was not calming. Her mind was still chaotic, her thoughts unchecked.

And so she skipped the stairs that would take her to filthy hearth and home, and headed deeper into Lowtown.

She liked the morning market bustle. She wanted more than anything to disappear, to become as faceless as those she passed in the alleys, and the city was more than willing to accommodate. It was one of the very few charms the district possessed, but Hawke was a woman who could appreciate such a quality in a place of residence. A quiet stroll was just what she needed to clear her head.

That, and a trip to the bathhouse.

Her silver was well-spent on a bucket of hot water, soap, and a screen to wash behind. Her boots held a quarry's worth of grit and gravel, dumped unceremoniously onto the floor. She was careful as she untied Bethany's scarf from her wrist, and as she stripped off her leathers, the muscles in her arms throbbed in protest, each twinge and pull an aching reminder of what she'd put her body through over the course of the past sixteen hours. Still, the water worked its wonders as she'd hoped it would, and she left the bathhouse freshened and restored and dreadfully awake.

It was near enough to noonday when finally she reached the market district proper, and the faint trace of sulphur on the breeze was all but chased away as she passed stalls loaded with produce and bakery bread. She could close her eyes and breathe in the scent of the merchant trade, steaming loaves and dirt-caked potatoes and butcher's blood, and by Andraste's grace, she could almost imagine herself in Lothering once more, the ramshackle stalls set along a single, crooked lane. She'd tossed apples at her brother while her mother bartered with the vendor, ever a vigilant eye out for chanters and templars.

Maker, memories fifteen years old now, and still they drew her in, overwhelmed her as only a memory could. There was no kind fate in store for those three children, the dead, the gone, and she, the first who would be last. Marian forced her eyes open, assaulting herself with the sun's orange glare, blinding herself to memory, recovering from the intrusion as spots danced across her vision. She swallowed her sorrow, and choked a little on the bitter taste.

She paid a copper bit for an apple off the nearest cart. She turned it over and over again in her hands as she continued to make her distracted way through the crowd. A lovely red apple, flecked through with green. Bruised, softening, too long off the bough, but still a decent enough find for below the hill.

She was still examining her apple closely, and scarcely aware of her surroundings, when a black claw of a hand took her by the wrist. She twisted away easily from a grip that wasn't meant to hold but wasn't quick enough to stop the elf from snatching her apple away.

"That's mine," she pointed out.

"As are my thanks," Fenris replied, tossing the apple up into the air once for show before catching it and biting into it. She turned away to better hide the wince that came on her at the apple's soft, juicy _crunch_. Carver had never been so quick as to take something away from her, nor careful enough with his aim to ever land a hit in retaliation. She remembered him clearly then, the little boy he'd been, apple bits in his dark hair like melting snow.

"How long were you following me?" she asked.

Fenris gave her a strange, discerning look. "I – did your endeavour go poorly, Hawke?"

"Don't change the subject."

"I'm not," he said with a smirk. "I'm merely curious as to why you are so preoccupied that you didn't notice me until I'd taken your breakfast away." He took another bite of her apple.

She frowned at that, and her tongue suddenly felt so very ungainly. "You waited for me." When he did not reply, that awful awkward thickness in her mouth spread into her throat. "You waited on the docks all night?"

"No," he said, "but come dawn, I found myself concerned, so I walked down to wait for the ferry."

"That's quite the walk down from Hightown to sit around waiting before the sun's even up." She chewed the inside of her lip to stop her mouth from speculating any further.

"Perhaps," he said, and paused, just a heartbeat's worth of quiet, before biting into the apple again, but she caught it, that empty space where meaningful words ought to have been and she realized she was not the only one who was dancing around the unsaid. So she walked beside him in blessed silence as he finished her apple and tossed away the core, and she thought for the briefest moment that they'd steered clear of such ambiguous territory when he said, "Imagine my surprise, Hawke, when you were not on the ferry, neither upon the first return nor the second." He stopped walking, and it was a terribly hard thing to stop as well, to turn and face him and look for all the world like his concern was not the cause of the colour rising in her cheeks.

"You thought I'd been caught, didn't you?" she said, attempting to dissuade him with feigned indignity.

"Certainly not," he said, smirking again. "However, it did give me cause to wonder just how readily you'd be able to talk yourself out of trouble, were that the case."

Cause to wonder, indeed. "Things did not go as smoothly as I'd intended."

This time, she could have sworn she saw a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. "Things rarely do," he said, "and yet you wear the proof of your victory tied about your wrist, Hawke."

"It was not so easily won." She sighed, resisting the urge to finger the worn edge of Bethany's scarf. She would not call upon such softness within herself, not then and there, and Maker's mercy, _never_ before Fenris. Still, he'd helped her from the beginning, kept her secret from their well-meaning companions while she risked her life in the dead of night all by her lonesome. He deserved to know. "I was caught."

His lips twisted unhappily, a sure gesture that meant he was not at all surprised, and a little of the warmth she'd been feeling toward him cooled. She looked around at the people milling about them, all going about their business but all with ears and all with a working man's yen for more coin, and so she slipped a few stalls down to hide herself behind a stack of empty crates. Fenris followed begrudgingly.

"You were caught, and yet here you stand," he said impassively.

She sighed. "I _was_ caught, by a templar hiding in the shadows near the gatehouse," she said. Cullen's name was heavy on her tongue and yet she could not speak it. Of all the careless things she'd done the night before, endangering the templar knight any further was not going to be one of them. She owed him that courtesy. "He saw me first, I think, when I dropped down onto that cursed statue – I startled him, and he drew his blade."

"And you –"

"And I nearly put an arrow in his throat," she said, ashamed of herself even then for her irrational move, and all those that followed, everything she'd put at stake for her selfish desire. The arrow rested daunting among all the others in the quiver on her back, the one she'd branded forever with Cullen's fate the moment she'd drawn back her bowstring.

"Nearly," he said, "and yet your hands are clean."

"Today, at least," she said, and her throat pulled again, that same uncomfortable tightening. Attempting to cover the break, the weakness only drew a sideways glance from Fenris.  The crumbing wall of hesitance and tension shored up between them kept him at a distance, yet even as she looked away, shamed, she felt another little chunk of that wall tumble down.

She sighed. "He helped me."

"Your templar?"

"Yes," she said, bristling a little. "He thought me a thief, come to steal my sister away."

"He knew you?" Fenris asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Is it really so surprising? More know me every day, thanks in no small part to our friend Varric." She could almost have laughed then, knowing the stories as the patrons knew them, the drunks and the dockworkers and the way they stared, expecting the temptress of furious justice whose deadly aim was unrivalled in all of Kirkwall. Would that they knew the truth of the quiet, creeping shadow, the coward with a bow who had chased worldly riches and left her own sister to a mage's fate. She was all of these things, and yet none of them; she wore the hero's mask, a liar's weaving of flesh and blood and legend. Few ever chose to see past it, to see who breathed and thought and felt beneath. The elf before her did, he always had, and she thought that perhaps Cullen had caught a glimpse of that light, gleaned from the lurking shadows of which she'd become a part.

"Who was this templar?" Fenris asked. "A sympathetic templar is as much of a danger as –"

Marian gave him a wry smile. "There's no need to worry, Fenris. He is no threat to the Circle. He helped to sneak me in, that's all, I promise you."

"He took you to your sister?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "He took me to a place where I could hide and watch her for a time." She thought back on Bethany, the way her walk had given her away, how that crown of tumbling dark hair could have belonged to none other. "And yet no matter however careful I try to be, or quiet, or still, I cannot fool my own sister. She left me this," she said, holding up her wrist, so he might better see the red scarf, its frayed black embroidery flames. "I found it tied to a bracket when I finally found the nerve to climb down."

Fenris said nothing for a long moment, deep in thought, and the silence was cold and misplaced in the close quarters of their little makeshift alcove. Finally, his eyes found hers, he asked in a voice very low, "Will it be enough for you, Hawke?"

His question unsettled her, sent a chill through her, and she found herself suddenly tiring of the marketplace and missing her bed terribly.

"For now, it is," she said, her throat playing tricks on her once more. She turned to leave, wanting away, wanting home and her mother, fatigue gnawing at her patience.

"Your sister cannot give you absolution, Hawke," he said to her back.

The hard edge of his words stopped her, and she looked over her shoulder at him even as her legs begged her to move, and her heart screamed for her to do it _now_. She levelled him with a dark gaze; he did not flinch, and only the narrowing of his green eyes betrayed his annoyance.

"If it weren't for me –"

"I will never understand why you are always so willing to take the brunt of all blame upon yourself," he said, sounding not angry as he looked but rather bewildered. "There is nothing to forgive, and chasing after this is folly. You did not make Bethany what she is."

"I made her an apostate, Fenris. She gave herself up to protect Mother, just like Carver, _just_ like him." She took a deep, steadying breath. She'd promised her father, sworn before the Maker and the flames of brave Andraste that she would look out for them always, and yet she'd lost them both to death and destiny.

Fenris frowned, and seemed to hesitate a moment before reaching out and placing his hand on Bethany's scarf tied about her wrist, careful of the contact between his armour and her mostly unguarded arm.

"Sacrifice is a choice, Hawke, and hers deserves honouring," he said gently, the words a kindness that felt strange coming from her normally bristly companion.

She tried a smile, tired as it was, to break the tension that was rising once more between them, that plaguing uncertainty that came with walking on weak ice, never knowing how little stood between relative safety and utter collapse. She smiled a little wider in an attempt to disarm him, all part of a fine performance she knew by rote. Charm them to cadency, Varric would have been proud – if only Fenris had fallen for it.

"I am grateful, you know," she said, and by the Maker, he was still holding her wrist, that impossibly delicate grasp of tempered black steel. "Your concern is – thank you, Fenris."

He let her go, dropped her arm as quickly as if she'd burned him. "It was nothing. Shall I walk you home?"

Hawke shook her head. "No, you have far enough to go as it is."

"Soon it won't be so far, once you reclaim your estate," he said, and graced her with a smile.

"I don't think Hightown is ready for me," she said, and laughed, finding her ease as that shadow of anxiety began to pass them by once more. "Another fallen Amell, and a Ferelden blight refugee as well."

"I'm sure those gold blind cowards will welcome another reason to justify their paranoia and lock their doors at night," Fenris said, smirking with disdain.

"All but you," she said. "You always leave your door unlocked, like you want trouble to come walking right in."

He gave her an odd look. "I had wondered if you'd noticed," he said, a half-smile still on his lips as he looked at her and for the life of her, she could not think of a thing to say. His eyes steadied her even as the market moved beyond their hiding place, and in that moment she lost track of everything and Maker forgive her but she did not care.

"Go home and get some rest, Hawke," he said quietly.

The strain in his voice brought her back to the market, to Fenris bristled and brooding, and to an exhaustion she was certain she could feel straight through to her bones. She didn't reply nor say goodbye, completely distrustful of the tongue that had failed her. She only turned and walked away, and when she dared a glance behind her before she turned the corner, he was already gone.

For all her walk home, Hawke berated herself the night's mistakes, and the new ones she'd made upon the morning. Fenris' words echoed in her mind, talk of sacrifice and honour. Duty and doubt were the things that filled her heart, anything to dispel that horrid emptiness after Bethany had been taken by Cullen, he who was bound by duty to take all that remained of Marian's promise to her father.

And when finally she reached her uncle's wretched home, her hands were shaking and she could not bring them to stop. With what strength she had, she tried to steel herself.

In one final cruel twist it seemed that, for all the trouble she'd put herself through, the climbing and the sneaking and the watching, Cullen and her sister and Fenris, pushing open that rickety old door to face her mother was to be the hardest trial yet.


	9. The Lie Upon Her Sleep

* * *

_Hawke_

* * *

 

Leandra Hawke was not a woman to be feared.

Marian's earliest memories of her mother were of weeping, and of dark days filled with hollow joys. She remembered firelight and hushed voices, she remembered fragments of strange, haunting songs. Mother had sung to her when she was still small enough to curl up in a lap, yet old enough to keep from squirming. She could not recall the words of the song, had never paid them much mind, but the melody came on her sometimes still, so many years later.

She hummed it to herself as she walked through the door, pretending, always pretending, that there was nothing amiss. At the very least, she was not covered in blood, so how much trouble could she have possibly gotten into?

A fine charade.

Inside the dim, cramped front room, Dog was stretched out lazily before the fire, but he stood as she entered; his stub of a tail wagged at the sight of her, and he only barked but once, a curious cock to his head when she did not beckon him to come straightaway. While she tried to feign a casual bearing, she chanced a quick glance at Leandra.

The shadows beneath her mother's eyes told her that perhaps it might have been better to have come home bloodied and bruised, after all.

"Marian," Leandra said, speaking with naught but relief, and yet Hawke had never known a conversation which began with her given name to end in any other way but by profuse, extended apologizing on her part.

"Hello, Mother," she said, attempting to sound sheepish and sleepy even though her nerves still jumped as if she'd been struck by a bolt of magic. The door to the room where she now slept alone was open and inviting and so very close. She knelt down as Dog padded over, his wet nose nudging at her hands to seek out the scent of her, the clinging smell of cheap soap and salt sea, and the strangeness of stone and magic beneath.

"You've waited, haven't you?" Marian asked, however needlessly. The guilt struck a familiar chord, but she wouldn't lose herself to it. Never before had her mother proven a daunting obstacle, simply an unlikely one, and Hawke was nothing if not obstinate.

"It's not like you to stay out without word," said her mother, and Hawke silently tried to gauge the level of her mother's worry, but she could not hear the truth beyond all that was controlled and proper in her mother's soft tones. No, it was the eyes that betrayed her mother's fretful concern, those stormy greys washed with relief at the sight of her eldest daughter, the only child that remained to her. Son dead, daughter lost, and left to pace a tiny hearth with her bitter, wasted brother, always waiting and always wondering.

The guilt coiled in Marian's gut was unexpected and unwelcome, near enough to familiar to spread cold and quick, tightening, always tightening. Guilt was her mother's weapon, and Leandra wielded it with precision and grace. Even after twenty-five years, all of Marian's defences fell before it.

Still, she'd always withstood better than some. Her father had been prone to surrender in the name of peace, and no matter how hard he'd tried, Carver had never stood a chance.

Hawke scratched Dog behind the ears, prolonging the inevitable. He looked up at her, impassive and utterly no help at all.

"A matter of some importance came up," Marian said vaguely, dismissively, as if it was of so little consequence. She stood, giving Dog one final pat. He seemed to have no trouble at all leaving her to her fate. Traitor.

"It _must_ have been important if you were so careless in covering up your tracks," Leandra said, and there was something of a glint in her eye, a spark of intrigue that flared for a moment only before disappearing as the light shifted and her mother with it.

Oh, _Maker._ Marian knew that look.

"Mother, _please_. Don't think –"

"I think nothing of the sort, Marian darling, fear not," Leandra said, and the mischief in her tone betrayed every word she spoke. "What would one such as I know of such things, I ask you. An old woman, a _mother_." All the while, that damn glint winked at her, insinuating, confident.

It was a ready-made lie, one she should be grateful for, one to make her mother's meagre life a little happier for the hoping.

Not a _chance._

"I'm very tired, Mother," she said, evasive as ever, because to open her mouth and say aught else would only fail to dissuade Leandra Hawke. It was a gift of her mother's, a certain defiance, a stubbornness of character that she inadvertently bequeathed to all three of her children. That wilfulness was the Amell blood coursing in their veins, her father had told her once. Still, so many years later, Marian could see so clearly the firelight cast from a hearth long left behind, and the shadows that had stretched across his greying face.

Hero's blood, so it was said, word coming from back home, across the sea. Hawke was sometimes left with cause to wonder if her father had sensed it all along, known somehow.

While she considered her memory of her father, her mother watched on, appraising. "Yes, you do seem rather fatigued," Leandra said, and a sneaking smile flit across her lips, so quick that any other might not have caught it, but Marian was a _Hawke_ , and Maker knew she noticed much too much. "You weren't – you weren't up the _whole_ night, were you, darling?"

Marian laughed, a required effect. _"Mother,"_ she said, far too sharply.

"Oh, all right," Leandra said, and huffed. "You might try talking to me, you know. I would not betray your secrets."

And _there_ , there it was, the ending blow, cut quick and deep, and the guilt spread like poison.

"I know, Mother," she said, and there was more to say, more of the endless refrain of platitudes and pretty lies, but the door was blown open behind her then, and she realized with rising disappointment that she had not thought to ask where her uncle was.

"Oh, there you are," he said, as if he'd just stumbled upon a long missing item of passing import, a glove, perhaps, or a spare key. "Did you know that noisy dwarf of yours just offered me fifty silver?"

Her uncle watched her expectantly. Her bed seemed a forlorn hope at this juncture. "He's not _my_ noisy _–_ oh, never mind," she said, and she could not summon the gall to even _sound_ offended, but the development could not be ignored. "Why did he offer you the silver, Uncle?"

Gamlen smiled, a grim and unsettling sight. "He seems to have got it in his head you were up to something last night," he said, turning his leering grimace on her as he slouched into a chair by the fire. "I told him the last place I'd seen you was here at home. Didn't tell him _when_ that was, though it was what he seemed keenest on." Hawke almost felt a surge of gratitude toward her uncle before he went ahead and spoiled it by adding, "Blighted dwarf thinks he can squeeze me for a paltry fifty silver? I know what that information is worth."

" _Gamlen,"_ her mother admonished, always managing to seem surprised by her brother's avarice and low intent.

Hawke sighed, and touched a hand to her brow. "I need to lay down," she said with some degree of finality, and left her elders to their bickering, Dog at her heels.

It was with great relief that she closed the door to her tiny room, and was cast into near immediate darkness. She stayed there for a long moment, her hands against the door, listening as the voices slipped in beneath, a dreadful murmur and a hiss of spite. Whole minutes passed, perhaps, before the argument sputtered out and descended into a quiet sense of normalcy, and finally, _finally_ , she could let her hands fall and step away from the door, finally she could make ready for some much needed – yet hardly deserved – rest.

She lit a candle, and went through the arduous motions of removing her gear. Her fingers ached as she stripped off her gloves, stiff and clumsy and raw. Her feet fared little better, sore in ways she hadn't thought possible but surprisingly sound and whole, for they had been protected by her boots even as she'd jammed them into niches far too small.

 _Maker's_ _breath_ , she'd not thought it would all go so badly, and so wrong, and so fast, and yet there she stood, all but triumphant, literally home free. Still her hands shook and her stomach roiled and she thought perhaps she might sink to her knees and weep simply for the release of it.

No, no matter how sorry she might feel for herself, she had no tears to spare for this. She had cried for Bethany, so many nights spent alone and shivering in this very room, and she had thought herself all the stronger for it. Perhaps that was not the case. Perhaps she was just as foolish and changeable as she'd always been, and her sister would not be the last to pay the price of her terrible choices.

She thought of Cullen then, he who'd risked far too much to help her.

Sighing, she set her bow on the makeshift rack, and unbuckled the strap across her chest that held her quiver and harness in place. She shrugged out of it as one and hung it up next to the rack. Without much in the way of proper thought, she pulled out an arrow, one with a fletch slightly ruffled and crooked, as if it had been grabbed awkwardly and in a hurry. She smoothed it back into place with two fingers, a very delicate touch.

She'd been so _careful._ Cullen shouldn't have heard her, she shouldn't have _seen_ him.

She spun the arrow between her fingertips, nock over tip. She thought back to the night before, the tight quarters, her sloppy draw, the stir of stillness that had been her target.

Fate or chance... or _something._

She held her breath, and snapped the shaft in two.

She waited... one moment, two, and no stars shuddered and no shadows wept. No clarity came, no tender truth, no awakening. She took a breath, and another, gripping the broken shaft pieces in her hands as if something so trivial could be so precious, so vital a thing that the balance of her world could rest so uncertainly upon it.

Just a broken arrow, only so much wood and bristle and steel.

Dog huffed loudly, and whatever trance had held her so was unbound. She dropped the splintered pieces on the table.

"Did you wait up all night too, boy?" she asked, kneeling down to scratch the mabari behind his ears.

He watched her impassively, and yawned.

Marian stood, and stretched her stiff arms over her head. She felt no lighter, no terrible weight lifted, but if there was more heavy thinking to be done, it would be done better after a few solid hours of sleep. The worries of a lifetime were not so easily shifted, and she could not expect the burdens of such existence to fade quickly, or fully.

Scars over scars, hearts mend anew with each ugly rending.

_Unshaken by the darkness of the world, she shall know true peace._

More pretty lies to lull her sorry soul to sleep.

 

* * *

  _Cullen_  


* * *

 

Cullen had come to the unfortunate conclusion that he would never know true peace again.

He'd spent most of his day quietly observing the recruits as they drilled in the practice yard, the shouts and steel clangour enough to drive out even the most intrusive of thoughts, and to this song of swords he meditated while the young men down in the yard cursed and fell and rose to fight on.

It was no peace, but it was _something_ , calming and familiar. The yard below him was alive, even if he felt no part of their battering and sweating and grunting, they who were unaware that he saw every feinted step and felled blow.

It was a quick dance taught these recruits, bloody and ruthless. To cut down the threat before them, to subdue and to silence.

It was not _enough._

Better to Harrow them, better to give them the mage's test, throw them defenceless before a demon and watch how they fare. Teach them to withstand the torment and torture, the hunger and desire that ripped at the body and sapped the soul until naught was left but quivering flesh and a shattered mind.

Cullen sighed, and touched his temple. Perhaps not so shattered.

It was late in the afternoon when he finally left the practice yard, the screech of striking steel following him down the open corridor. The sun turned the spires of the Gallows to burnished flame, the high statues blazing with light. His favourite time, the last vestiges of full, glorious day before the long shadows took hold and night began to fall in earnest. And here in this fortress of high stone, night fell early, fast and merciless.

The path to Meredith's study was a familiar one, far more so than the routes he cut during his day-to-day grind, or the secret ways he took during his wanderings through the dark, the twisty, narrow shadows that stretched along the edge of the torchlight.

Now, the halls were wide and well-lit, no shadows to linger and hide the night thieves.

" _I would make a very poor thief,"_ Hawke had said, and there was deep strength in her sadness, but she'd smiled soon after and stolen a bit of him for herself, and he'd wondered if she wasn't something of a liar. A poor thief, indeed.

In the Templar Hall, Meredith's door was open, and her tranquil assistant stood without, making notations on a scroll. A book was propped in the crook of her arm, an improvised writing surface. There was no one else in sight.

"Knight-Captain Cullen," she said, cold and even as a blade's edge. It sent a chill through him, as speaking to the tranquil often did; even after near on two decades, growing up in the Chantry and later on as a templar, he'd never resolved himself to those trapped in tranquillity, those once-mages, severed servants of the Maker's will.

Elsa did not once looked up from her scroll, nor did she acknowledge him further. The ceaseless scratching of her quill chased him into the Knight-Commander's study, and it was with some relief that he shut the door behind him.

"Ser Cullen," said Meredith, by way of a greeting, and there was a degree of warmth in her voice, a remnant of his encounter with the tranquil Elsa in the corridor. She stood behind her desk, a terribly imposing figure in full-plated glory, the embodiment of his order, a golden-haired vision of justice and divinity. There was an old book laying open on the desk, showing him intricate script and dark illustration, and whatever was recorded on those pages held Meredith transfixed.

"I had hoped to speak with you, Knight-Commander."

She spared him only the briefest glance. "I can give you a moment only, there is urgent business to which I must attend."

Cullen straightened his shoulders. "I have some concerns about the new recruits."

Her second glance was sharp, critical, and quickly turned to an icy, overlong glare. "Such as?"

"I believe that they are –" He paused, gritting his teeth as he struggled to put to words the sickened twist in his gut that seemed to tighten by the day. His experience the night before, the Hawke on the wall, the shadow that had made a mockery of his night-watch, all had served to bring clarity to him as abruptly as a blow to the back of the head. "I believe these new recruits are ill-prepared, Knight-Commander."

"You did not mention this in your initial inspection report," Meredith said dismissively, already back to her ancient, ponderous tome. "You did not find their training wanting then?"

"It has taken me some time to properly determine the cause of my concern," he said. "I believe that our recruits – and perhaps even our more seasoned templars – are becoming too complacent when it comes to –"

Meredith interrupted him, her voice a fine, steady edge, "You will remember to whom you speak, Knight-Captain. I will not have you undervalue the caution and vigilance of the men and women of this order, nor will I hear such base paranoia from one such as you."

One such as him.

"Our men are ready, whatever may come," Meredith said firmly, and then raised her eyes from the pages on the desk to fix them on him, a hard and unyielding stare. "The weakness of Ferelden, the leniency of Starkhaven; by the Maker, I will not see Kirkwall fall to the mercy of its mages. Vigilance is our _only_ virtue."

With those words, his argument died in his throat, and he fell silent. He'd come up against the obstinacy of the Knight-Commander on more than one occasion, and knew no force on Thedas nor the Maker, Himself, could shake her resolve.

"As you will, Knight-Commander," he said, bowing his head low.

"Your concerns, misplaced as they are, are admirable," she said, but there was no sincerity in her voice to give the words weight, and he could not move himself to believe the sentiment. "You have proven yourself a loyal knight of sound judgement, but there is no place for the sowing of this discord. Our templars will stand against those mages who would oppose them to protect the people of this city. It is a duty second only to the will of our Maker."

He nodded, not daring to speak again.

Her praise was a hollow, useless thing. Her eyes cut like ice, cold postulation to rush over him, to freeze and crush and immobilize him. He'd known and suffered such enduring expectation before, and he would weather this and continue on.

Yet –

"You are dismissed," she said, already absent, her attention back to the tome on her desk, those thick pages bordered with tendrils of curling red ink, and to this diversion Cullen left her, taking his unanswered concerns with him.


	10. Worthy of Pride and Pain

* * *

_Hawke_

* * *

 

It took three very long, very lonely days before Hawke worked up the courage to venture beyond Lowtown. Her seclusion had been a bit of a concession on her part, the waving of a white flag before her mother's sighing and her uncle's sullen glaring.

Once, she'd had a bullheaded brother and a sweet-faced sister at her back, reinforcements against such blatant emotional treachery. Now, she stood alone and she was hopelessly outmatched.

Still, it would not do to focus entirely on the negative. Her gear had not been in such good condition since before her ill-fated jaunt into the Deep Roads. The correspondence that had been piling up since her arrival in Kirkwall was neatly taken care of. And to add to the intrigue (and her own personal enjoyment), she had quietly watched her mother's hopes dashed as the days passed without some guilty suitor coming to call. Without so much as a single word, Marian accepted the small victory, and left the rest well enough alone.

Her chosen solitude became a strange sort of blessing, giving her the time with her thoughts she'd desperately needed. Gamlen's hovel wasn't home, not exactly, and her welcome there was a precarious one and always had been, but in no uncertain terms did she feel more at peace there than she did then. She was rested, she was recovering. Lowtown had never felt as safe to her.

Not that a single one of her companions had been content to leave her wallowing there, Maker forbid. Over the course of her confinement, each in turn had come to pay her a visit; Anders and Merrill the first day with well-meant gifts and probing questions, Varric and Aveline the second day with promises of work and ale and tavern stories.

It hadn't truly occurred to her that something was amiss until the night before, when Isabela had stormed in at an ungodly hour. She'd poked Hawke square in the chest, demanding to know what had happened and why she was so damned keen on hiding from it.

It was then that Hawke, after escorting the still raging pirate out the door, got the sneaking suspicion that her friends had finally banded together to fight a common cause, and that cause was her silence – and, were that the case, there was probably a good deal of silver riding on the result.

The only one who kept his distance was Fenris. She knew better than to expect him. The wolf was not one for scratching at doors. He would wait for her to come to him. She owed him her thanks and moreover, an explanation, but that for the moment would keep. Pressing matters, such as they were, had a way of demanding attention.

And so it was that come the morning, Hawke knotted up her hair, put a smile on her face, and told her mother she had an errand to attend. Before Leandra could even open her mouth in reply, Hawke was already walking her sorry hide back out into the sunlight, headed for the Gallows.

The rusted groan of the door closing behind her – and the final scrape as she forced it properly shut with the toe of her boot – had rarely sounded so sweet.

It was a lovely morning, even for Kirkwall. The sun was shining bright and hot, and a stiff wind was carrying the sulphur of the foundries out over the mountains, away from the city and her lungs. She stretched, and skipped down the steps – and made it all of twenty paces before Varric and Isabela descended upon her, up to no good by the look of the smiles they gave her in greeting.

"Hawke, I've missed you," Isabela said. Her arm threaded around Marian's like a clinging vine, who had fortunately – or unfortunately – spent far too much time with the pirate to be fooled by such a sisterly greeting.

"You saw me last night," Hawke said. She tried to free her arm, but Isabela was far more adept at landing a catch than she was at escaping, and the struggle was in vain.

"Yes, about that," Isabela said, and from wherever she conjured her sheepish blush, Marian did not want to know. "You must apologize to your mother for me. Does she always go to bed that early?"

"It was well past midnight, Isabela," Marian said.

"So _that's_ where you went off to?" Varric noted, strolling confidently behind them, a dwarf who had enough of the city in his pocket as to be at ease wherever he went. The chaos of travelling with Hawke always seemed to balance that out nicely. As she glanced over her shoulder, he gave her a grin and a wink. "Hey, Rivaini, what happened to that poor blighted bastard that disappeared with you?"

Hawke looked at Isabela and raised an eyebrow.

"You know I don't kiss and tell," Isabela said, lying through her teeth.

"Please tell me you didn't leave some poor wretch on my doorstep while you shouted at me and offended my mother."

Isabela's rolled her eyes. "I did nothing of the sort – well, I suppose I did do the shouting bit, didn't I? Anyway, the answer is no, I sent him on his merry way long before we reached your district."

Hawke frowned, wondering absently by Isabela's vague allusions if she'd ridden him, robbed him, or duelled him. Judging by the sly, seductive grin on her friend's face, perhaps it was all three.

Isabela's moods and desires were as changeable as the winds. If the pirate had any code of honour, any sense of loyalty, Hawke could never truly discern. In this black and white city of templar and mage, ever and always Isabela was distinctly _grey._

"Now, if you don't mind, is there something I can help the two of you with?" Hawke asked, skipping lightly over questionable wet-spots that dotted the pavement here and there. Varric stepped smoothly around them, never missing a beat, and Isabela trudged through them regardless.

"Can't a dwarf enquire after the well-being of his muse?" Varric asked. "Really, Hawke, if you're going to move to Hightown, you're going to have to work on your courtesies."

"Maybe I won't move to Hightown," she said, nonchalant. "Maybe I'll stay below the hill. I do so enjoy being your neighbour."

Varric laughed. "No need for threats, my friend." He lifted his hands before him in mock-pacification. "Now, speaking of Hightown, I've got some business to take care of on your behalf. Will you be joining me? Buyers like to see your pretty face, makes for a better image when I tell them the story of how you attained your ill-gotten gains."

"No, thank you, I'm off to the herbalist," Hawke said, and even the whitest of lies was sour on her tongue. She looked to Isabela. "Will _you_ be joining me?"

"The Gallows? No, thank you," Isabela said. "My, I do so love it when you give me a choice, Hawke. I could get used to this." She was laughing as she walked away, headed for the market.

Varric lingered only a moment longer. "Drinks at the Hanged Man later?"

Hawke smiled. "I wouldn't miss it."

"Says the woman who spent the last three days hiding under her bed," Varric said, and shook his head. "Hardly big damn hero stuff, Hawke."

"I'm sorry, Varric. I will try. Shall I bring you the head of a genlock to make up for it?"

"That's sweet, Hawke, but Norah would have me killed in my sleep if I tried to mount it on the wall," he said, and with one last grin he turned and walked away. She watched after him until she lost sight of his duster in crowd, and her last glimpse was of Bianca's polished stock glinting in the sunlight.

Then, she was alone amidst the crowd of strangers.

Sighing, she tipped her face up to the sky and sun and Chantry spires. Even in the depths of Lowtown, sometimes she would find beauty and light, those strange comforts of home that were always so fleeting with their graces.

It wasn't so very long ago that she'd gotten lost more often than not on these labyrinthine streets, as hopeless as Merrill her first few days in Kirkwall. Now, she'd learned her way, walked each and every byway, climbed every narrow flight of stairs – she'd even set foot in a few of the darker places Lowtown had to offer, the snug, twisted corridors and dead-end alleys that the more law-abiding residents of the district would scarcely be able to find.

She knew that she was not destined to stay in Lowtown – no matter her idle threats to Varric, she would not allow her mother to wallow and rot below the hill while the seat of the Amells was still theirs for the claiming.

But this place, with its stone streets washed of colour and the clinging smell of sulphur, it was a part of her now. In her blood.

She could find her way to the docks with her eyes closed.

 

* * *

  _Cullen_  


* * *

 

Cullen had never realized before how little time he had spent looking up at the reaching heights of the Gallows.

There were many things that had escaped his notice, it seemed, a testament to his distraction and his rooted existence. For instance, there was a section of the southwest tower that was weather-damaged and crumbling. A pair of sparrows roosted in the rubble. He saw them often now, brown specks against the stark white stone, the whole of their days spent darting and diving among statues crusted with salt and streaked by grime.

Most of those towers and walkways had been closed off centuries ago, some gates shut so long they had rusted into place. Neither templar nor mage had set foot on those upper floors for time out of mind – though to say only ghosts walked those walls was a lie, one known only to him.

Shadows, too, had ascended those dangerous heights.

Towers were meant to be climbed. Once, he'd done so dutifully and without question. Steep and winding to the high-windowed Harrowing Chamber, where the dust never settled and even the flagstones smelled of lyrium and blood.

In Kirkwall, the Harrowing Chamber was a dungeon, dark and damp, and every stone smelled of the sea.

His mind wondered at such idle curiosities now, where before there had been little but the cause of his calling. Before – well, _before,_ there had been little need to.

Now, his eyes went up. He had never grown accustomed to the boxed-in feeling he got when he stood in the courtyard and stared up at the sky, so vast above him and so painfully blue. It left him dizzy and empty. He'd spent so many years patrolling Kinloch's wide, curving halls, stone above his head and stone beneath his feet. A single spindled tower, ancient and strong, a shadow black and formidable against the lesser darkness of the night.

There had been warmth there, once. Safety. It was the only sense of home he had ever known. He'd come to understand his purpose there, the honour – and the tragedy – of his calling. A prison to some, a sanctuary to others. There had been an undeniable order to the existence of all those who lived within the tower's sturdy walls.

And then – and then the blood had run down the steps as water and the fires scorched the stones, and his world was reduced to the glow of violet light. Agony and torment. His memories spilled like ink, and her, always _her,_ there had always been ink on her fingers. Until –

Until there _wasn't_ anymore, until it was blood and ash and leather, and _"hold on, Cullen, hold on, oh Maker's blood, Wynne, help me –"_

Madness. Madness and magic and death, a twisted legacy to leave.

It was the end of their tale, there in that tower, the lake but a shadow of a memory, and all those steps leading down into the darkness where his brothers had fallen in haunted rooms, one by one, until he was all that remained.

He'd been spared, saved, and for what?

Broken, confused, and so, so angry, he'd left Kinloch Hold rather than fight alongside his fellows against the Blight. He had not the strength left, nor the will.

At Greagoir's behest, he travelled to Amaranthine, a cold and close-kept city on the sea, where the twilit streets had echoed with the dangerous rumours of the war to the south. A small ship and a swift wind had carried him north to Kirkwall, where a new posting awaited, and a new commander.

Meredith. Better suited, Greagoir had said, to Cullen's ardent convictions.

He missed that old man, sometimes.

A little more than a year had passed since he'd first laid eyes on the Gallows, a pale, daunting silhouette against the craggy harbour cliffs. The city of Kirkwall had loomed high over the sea, the chantry upon its hill a gleaming beacon in the rising sun. The sight had overwhelmed him, stolen his breath. Never in all his days had he felt so insignificant, so _small_ , as he had then.

It was only a single moment, all those dawns ago. The city had brought him many and more memories since that sunrise, few of them pleasant.

To be a templar in Kirkwall was not to stand idle watch over mages at their study, meting out their fate and their justice as divine duty demanded. To be a templar in Kirkwall was to stand against the darkness that was slowly spreading across Thedas.

At least, that was the theory. The three days that had passed since his last nighttime vigil had done much to colour his thinking. As much as it pained him to admit, he had seen with his own eyes how complacent his men had grown, ever assured of their right as supreme protectors of the chantry and sentries of the Circle.

To be a templar in Kirkwall was to be blinded by the brand upon the breastplate, to see naught but the light while things unseen crept about in the shadow that lingered between the day and the night. To be a templar in Kirkwall was to be made the fool.

It was troubling, and the days since his awakening had shown little promise.

Still, there was much he could do. Perhaps his time in Kirkwall would have lasting purpose.

It was to his regret, however, that Cullen's renewed outlook upon his life and calling came to little consequence in the days that followed his unsettling revelations.

He had neither friend nor follower in the order, none that he could take into confidence. There were those he respected, surely, and those he knew respected him in kind.

Yet even during his short time in Kirkwall, he'd learned one invaluable truth: trust was a rare and utterly precious thing, and as he watched Hawke walk across the sunny courtyard toward him, blessedly alone, he realized he'd lived far too long without it.

She'd entered the Gallows through the southern gatehouse, innocuous and ordinary and it was strange how that itself was what caught his attention, as if it were _surprising_ somehow that Marian Hawke would do something so expected as walk through the main gate in the sunlight of a morning when there were walls to be scaled and shadows to be courted.

Cullen knew at a glance that he was her mark, though she stopped to browse the armourer's wares, and even took a moment to stare up at the great bronze raptor guarding the gate, an ally evermore in all her shadowed games.

The sight of her, neck craned in curious contemplation, brought back the vivid memory of her descent by faint moonlight, arrow at the ready upon first sight of him, and their uneasy truce, all in darkness and silence.

When she finally did approach him, it was with a subtle sway to her hips and a conspiratorial crook to the corner of her mouth. "A fine morning, don't you think, Knight-Captain?" she asked, casual, innocent, and pretending for all the world that she had not done what she'd done – and gotten away clean.

"I have scarce seen finer, Serah Hawke," he said, and could not keep the smile from his own face, small allowance though it was. There was a glint in her eye that could be neither denied nor contained. And so catching her game, he said, "It's not often one sees you wandering alone."

"Not often, no, though it happens." She glanced around then, eyes darting from gloomy corners to sunny steps, as if even that slight admittance would bring intrigue and danger down upon her head, she without blade or bolt of her honoured companions to aid and protect her. When she finally turned her gaze back to him, it was with a true and proper smile. "I hope there has been no trouble on my account," she said, her voice kept low.

"I'm certain I don't know what you mean," he said easily, trying his best to look both reassuring and unassuming, but he feared this was not so much his strength as it was hers. Still, even with his own furtive look around, it was easy to see that not a soul in the courtyard paid them any mind at all. It was business as usual, the merchants calling and the mages lingering in the sun, all under the watchful eyes of his men.

And there it was again, and he wondered briefly if she thought on it too, that damning tell, the true _vigilance_ of his men.

"There has been no trouble here, serah," he said again, and smiled despite himself when she let loose a sigh of relief.

"Serah," she said, and chewed her lip a moment in thought. He did his best not to stare, but he was not so versed in grace and stealth as she. "And here I'd thought us past such formalities," she said. "Are we not, Cullen?"

By daylight, his name from her lips was unexpected, and the heat it brought to his cheeks most unwelcome. His brain stumbled for a response, earning him a raised eyebrow and another quirk to the corner of her mouth.

"I have known stranger things these past few days," was all he could manage, and oh, but he loathed his clumsy tongue more with each surpassing word.

Hawke laughed, turning a head or two in their direction, though she herself seemed to heed it little. By the Maker, but she was pretty when she laughed, the weight of burden gone from her shoulders, and the care and worry completely disappeared from her face – even if only for a moment.

"Tell me," she said, her smile lingering, "how fares my sweet sister?"

Cullen watched her a moment, taken aback by the forward manner of her query. In all the months that had passed since he had taken young Bethany Hawke from the Lowtown slums, Hawke had never once asked after her sister when she had found herself face-to-face with the templar who'd done her such a merciful wrong.

And yet –

" _Do you see her often, Ser?"_

A simple question, asked in hope and darkness and hushed tones, and he too prideful and too cowardly to answer. He had brushed it off, ignored it, ignored _her,_ and would have hurried away if not for her stopping him to give him naught but honesty and gratitude.

What heartlessness it would be to deny her now, when asked so kindly in the bright sunshine.

"Your sister does well," Cullen said, fumbling for truths to sate her desire for them. "Her skill is unsurpassed by her peers, and I hear she shows even greater promise for improvement. The First Enchanter is quite taken with her."

The wrong thing to say. "Taken with her _how_ , precisely?" asked Hawke, her dark eyes narrowing.

"I only meant –" He cleared his throat, cursing his tongue once more. "I only meant that it's rare a mage as adept as your sister joins the Circle at such a young age. She was trained well."

Hawke smiled at him again but it was a weak and haunted thing. "My father trained her. I merely watched over her."

"You and your brother, as I understand it," Cullen said, as gently as was possible. It was not his place, it had never been his place, and before he had met her, it had never crossed his mind to grieve a broken family, or to console those who mourned the fate of a captured apostate. "Now she is ours to train and to watch. It is our – _my_ duty as a templar to take this burden from you."

"I know your duty well enough, Templar," she said, a sudden sharpness to her tongue, and even she seemed surprised by it, for what came next was contrite, and infinitely softer. "Just – just know that she was no burden to me, and I pray to Andraste that you will come to find the same."

"I will remember," he said, nodding his respect while he idly wondered just how often he'd come into her prayers.

She seemed to be content with that, and her smiles came a little easier, and lasted a little longer. As did her curiosity, set free to flutter about, which naturally brought on more questions, but he found he didn't mind as long as she kept smiling as she did.

"You can save the platitudes for your patrons," she said, forgiving. "Tell me truly, Cullen, how is she?"

He exhaled loudly, buying himself time to think. For _true_ , what did he know of Bethany Hawke, but for what the mere sight of her told him, day in and day out. She was quiet, and calm, and apart from all else in the stone fortress. The memory of collecting her came to him, the cloying stench of sulphur on his tongue returned, the resignation in her eyes when her sister barged in the door, weathered and weary and too late to save anyone.

"She is _solitary,_ " he said, a careful choice but an honest one all the same. "Yet for all the time she spends alone, she does not seem lonely. I will admit, that she is _your_ sister keeps the others at a distance."

Hawke was not happy at all to hear this. "What do you mean?" she asked in a wary tone that suggested she did not really want to know the answer.

"The rumours of your deeds across the city and beyond reach even the mages here." He gave her an indulgent smile, and found himself enjoying how torn by pride she seemed. "Your sister's arrival caused quite the scandal among the apprentices."

"Much to the frustration of the Knight-Commander, I'd imagine," she said wryly, shaking her head. "I do apologize. It's not my intention to cause a fuss."

"I'm sure it never is," he said lightly, though his sudden courage was lost to him when she returned his teasing with a wink and a cheeky grin. He was all but stammering when he worked up the nerve to say, "I do hope that there are a few tales that will yet go untold."

Her grin slipped away as a flush rose to her cheeks. "I should hope that it will be more than a few, Ser," she said vaguely, and her eyes skipped away, "but you have no cause to worry. I will not give you away, I promise. I would not want to cause you any further trouble."

"No, not trouble," he said, realizing their conversation had come full circle, and so he added, "Perhaps the world could do with a bit of shaking up now and again." He was unable – or unwilling – to control his own impertinence, but her soft, breathy laugh became reward in its own right.

"Be careful, Cullen, or I might kiss you one day," she said, and while he sputtered and blushed, she gave him a respectful bow of her head, one that hinted at a more proper bearing rarely seen in her. "Maker guide your gaze," she said, and with one final slip of a smile, she turned and left the Gallows.

If he'd had a farewell prepared, he could not have spared it for she left him near to speechless. A parting prayer from she whom had left all this doubt and sobering clarity in his mind. It was a stark reminder that an Amell was not to be taken lightly.

Or at all, really, if he knew what was good for him.

Still, even after Hawke had disappeared and the day had moved sluggishly on, Cullen found himself watching the gatehouse, and the great statues that had stood as silent sentinels though the ages. His eyes moved upward, caught by the ripple of a banner in the otherwise still, hot afternoon, perhaps, or by the gleam of the sun on the burnished spikes atop the ramparts.

The walls, formidable. Heights no breathing soul of that fortress had ever walked.

No shadows moved. The light of day had stolen them all away.

Perhaps it was foolishness, or bravery brought on by the strength of sun and stone and the smile of a woman, but for the first time since his arrival in Kirkwall, Cullen did not dread the coming of the night.

Now he knew the shadow that crept along at the edge of the light, and stood vigilant where men of honour and duty did not.

He had seen with his own eyes the bonds of family and friendship that protected where plate and blade could not.

And perhaps – perhaps, with courage and steel and _vigilance_ , there would be a chance to save it all, yet.

Perhaps.


End file.
